The Outstanding Balance of Morality (revised edition)
by Meresger
Summary: There's a new villain in town using old tricks, and when the mysterious thief brings about Storybrooke's latest plot-twist, a lie is discovered and an old enemy re-sworn to revenge unleashes a far worse threat. And is there really such a thing as an "Evil Twin"? [Emma/Other (non-romance), Swanfire] (rated M for language) (Family/Action/Romance/Adventure)
1. The Prick and The Princess

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **888**

 **Title: The Outstanding Balance of Morality (revised edition)**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own** _ **Once Upon A Time**_ **. If I did, Adam & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.**

 **Summary: There's a new villain in town using old tricks, and when the mysterious thief brings about Storybrooke's latest plot-twist, a lie is discovered and an old enemy re-sworn to revenge unleashes a far worse threat. [Emma/Other (non-romance), Swanfire] (rated M for language)**

 **Genre: Family/Action/Romance/Adventure**

 **888**

 **The Outstanding Balance of Morality**

"True love, Miss Swan. The only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse."

\- Mr. Gold (1.22 "The Land Without Magic)

"See, the next time your lips touch Emma Swan's, all of her magic will be taken. Everything that makes her special, that makes her powerful, that makes her a threat will be gone."

\- Zelena to Hook (3.17 "The Jolly Roger")

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CHAPTER ONE

THE PRICK AND THE PRINCESS

At the prick of the needle, Storybrooke's sheriff cried out in startlement and stumbled a little before yanking free the hypodermic needle, it's old-timey metal plunger pushed in and what remained of the orangey-red liquid dripping onto the floor with a splatter of blood.

Just then David "Prince Charming" Nolan burst into the creepy mad scientist lair followed shortly by deputy Killian "Captain Hook" Jones who wheezed out, "Bloody bastard got away. Transmuted a manhole cover into some sort of portal."

"Is that?" David noticed the needle his daughter was holding while rubbing her backside. And an assortment of more needles filled with familiar liquid scattered on the table and floor around her.

Instead of getting an answer, Storybrooke's (ex?)-savior cried out, dropping the needle as she began to transmutate!

In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have kept Dr. Jekyll's dirty needle after Regina used it - or at least made sure it was destroyed after being used for the purposes of researching an antidote before Dr. Whale decided to _also_ recreate large batches of the original serum... though, to be fair, he did have good intentions for curing things like lycanthropy or allowing mermaids to remain fully human without fancy enchanted jewelry.

Still, given how good intentions always paved a path to Hell - or The Underworld - in Storybrooke, they probably should have cut their losses and known better than to mix magic with fringe science that had previously tried (and sort of succeeded) to raise the dead. Sadly, no one ever seemed to catch on and destroy the roots of the evils that continually and without fail came back to bite them in their asses.

This particular time it was that particular potion and the ass was - literally - that of Sheriff Emma Swan-Jones when in investigating the looting of Whale's lab she lock-picked her way into what used to be Any Given Sundae and then The Three Bears Day Spa (before the Storybrooke health department shut it down for its water temperature being just right for noro virus to thrive in). And while observing former mud baths and Jacuzzis turned into vats of percolating potions found herself propelled backward by the cloaked culprit and in the process a full hypodermic needle not only jabbed its way right through her very tight jeans but in being slammed up against the wall, the plunger had been pushed down, injecting its contents into her, well, _ass_.

And so it was that Storybrooke's latest victim of magical mayhem shuddered violently and began to glow, another Emma soon materializing with a translucent veiny sparkliness overlaying the original, features contorting and separating in what seemed to be a quite painful experience.

Standing by helpless to stop the transformation, Charming and Hook could only watch as the specter began freeing itself, nearly solidify into a corporeal doppleganger with a Seattle 1990s grunge fashion fetish and glasses that looked more suited to Harry Cary or Mr. Magoo.

Both men drew swords to battle the potentially malevolent bespeckled duplicate, poised and ready to launch an attack and kill the evil Nirvana roadie.

When the glowing and separating subsided, the second Emma did not try to murder the first one or anyone else, however, much to their collective surprise. Instead, she instantly slumped unconscious, followed moments later by the confused original in her red peacoat, lace-trimmed flower-festooned blouse, and highly impractical sockless high healed boots that most certainly resulted in at least one sprained ankle the way she landed as in their competitive haste to catch the princess, Hook and Charming collided like two over zealous outfielders after a fly ball.

888

Rumplestiltskin glared at the gaggle of do-gooders that had taken over his shop. The wards he'd once placed around the pawn shop no longer seemed to keep them out after Emma's barrier spell now... what... three or four years ago? no matter that it was long since shattered by Cora and Regina. At least the silent alarm still worked to alert him when her family of trespassing 'heroes' trampled all over his personal property.

And thankfully Belle had taken Gideon home hours ago as he didn't need these morons he was unfortunately related to via his dead first born son waking the one he hoped not to screw up - and to which he tried to keep him away from "The Charmings et al". He'd only attended that stupid belated victory party dinner because Belle had been plagued by a damn fool notion that they were all friends with some mild disagreements in the heat of passion when Rumplestiltskin well knew this lot had no compassion for either of them and only cared when they were barging in here like a ransomeware virus to demand favors for else.

Belle was upgrading the computers at the Library with some... complications from certain associates of the "sheriff's deputy" trampling mud all over the shop whose brains had apparently been less devoured by syphilis but not so little that they didn't trust the pirate to run a fair gambling operation out of an illegally sublet and fire-code-violating attic space. Needless to say, the last thing Rumplestiltskin needed was the herocrites adding to his frustrations.

"What have you lot done _now_?" Rumplestiltskin growled, tossing his rag in the trash bin and considering poofing the thing later to a closet in one of their residences to burn it to the ground.

"What the bloody hell stinks!?" Hook retorted.

"Other than you, you mean?"

"We don't have time for this," David stepped between the two men. "It turns out Whale replicated Jekyll's serum, someone stole it, and Emma got injected in some sort of booby trap."

Just then Snow, Regina and Henry burst into the shop after receiving a group text just to add to the mayhem, Henry with a, "Mom!... er... Moms?"

"Our hospital thief appears to be an alchemist," Regina deduced. "But I didn't think Emma would have a dark side to pull out. Unless she tracked Lily down without telling anyone to reverse that spell..."

"Just because one has been robbed of their own darkness doesn't mean they can't borrow it from another," Rumplestiltskin scoffed. "You of all people should know that. And savior magic or not, her heart was tested and did not pass with flying colors against Cruella."

"But Hades-" Hook began.

"Was a lying con artist who duped a homicidal rapist into freeing him with 'true loves kiss'," snorted Rumplestiltskin. "In the realms of the gods our rules do not apply, only our gullibility. Never mind that song spell and any additional protections it supplied ran its course some time ago. In any event, magic and nature both abhor imbalance. I'm sure _Mrs. Jones_ picked up enough of it over the years by leeching onto murderers and rapists, such as yourselves," he nodded at Regina and Hook.

Regina flushed while Hook rolled his eyes and snarked, "You always have to be petty, don't you, Crocodile? We're all family here-"

"Family?" scoffed Rumplestiltskin. "Ah, yes, Emma said I was family and that she would fight for me when _you_ tried to murder me in front of my own son and grandson, but since then has chosen to damn me repeatedly, even using my wife as a pawn to blackmail me into her selfish, childish, tantrum of a demand to save your worthless life more than once while demanding I not try to save anyone _I_ love," he scoffed, amending, "I'm sure she picked up enough darkness playing the nice warm scabbard in which to sheath your cutlass. Along with a number of venereal diseases."

"I don't have any diseases! And Emma doesn't think I'm worthless," Hook growled, "and you're hardly a hero with all you've done to us and your so-called true love and second go at fatherhood. You're just jealous that everyone recognized that I'm one of the heroes now and have seen you for the scum you are!"

"Killian! That's not helping!" Snow huffed. "Gold tried to help fix his mother's mess."

"Oh, yes, play nice," Rumplestiltskin scoffed at her, "now when your daughter needs my help. I seem to recall you barging in here as her right-hand thug, threatening to murder my son on rather shaky moral grounds. So you're not helping simply by standing here. Believe me, Belle is the only reason I agreed to attend your little family functions after 'my mother's mess', and even she wasn't in her right mind then."

To Hook, he amended derisively, "And as for you, pirate, jealous? Scum? I think that would be the other way around. The Dark One always brings out the truth in one's blackened heart, and yours was to bitch and moan about _your_ so-called true love being nothing but an anchor holding you down, holding you back from your true self: a villain. I hardly think attempting suicide to get attention is a grand romantic gesture either and you spout about your angsty meeting on a beanstalk adventure as if Miss Swan her companions didn't pull out from the hundreds of people you helped kill and then hid under their corpses after tricking them into thinking you were their friend - but then I'm not part of your little hero family now am I? So I suppose I just don't understand the true definition of 'hero'."

Rumplestiltskin then addressed the rest of Emma's family with an added, "Why would I want to be part of a disgustingly amoral family of self-righteous, hypocritical idiots? You can't stomach owning up to your darkness, any of you, that you love it, that it makes you stronger, that other people fearing you gives you power. Because they certainly don't respect you, not the joke you all are, playing the reformed mayor and the buddy cops and whatever it is," he waved a hand at Snow White, "you think you're actually instilling in those school children that help them be anything more than mouth-breathing breeders of another generation of ignorant, superstitious arseholes. You rip out your darkness or beat up some slob in a dark ally where no one can see what you've done and pretend it was their fault so you can keep pretending in the light of day that you're so special."

Poking the unconscious Sheriff with his cane, Gold said, "I don't envy any of you. I pity you and how pathetic you are that you actually think this woman is a hero, your victorious savior when she's nothing but a spoiled brat teenager in the body of a grown woman who treats justice like it's a suggestion does more shagging in the Sheriff's Station than paperwork. And all of you are the eternal exception to the very rules you spout ad nauseum, allowed to screw over everyone else in this town and be praised for cleaning up your shite... or even having other people, such as myself, do it for you while you wander around with your heads up your arses.

"Well, I'm not one of your sheep, Charming," he told the Prince. "And I owe your family nothing when you did nothing for mine. Emma Swan may have birthed a child by my firstborn son and stood as my ally once upon a time, but that woman ceased to exist, replaced by Mrs. Jones here who beat my second son bloody and threatened to murder him in front of me and his mother for the high crime of giving her lover a perfectly safe and happy time-out. Whatever The Land Without Magic made her, she was a far better person than after you got your self-righteous nonsense into her head and helped turn her into a selfish, cruel little princess. This isn't the woman my son loved, that he sacrificed his life for. As far as I'm concerned, she's long dead as well. So I owe _this_ woman nothing.

"In other words," he sneered, " _all of you kindly get the fuck out of my shop_."

888

After getting the fuck out of Gold's pawn shop, everyone gathered at Storybrooke General where Dr. Whale had been their next best hope to understanding Jekyll's (possibly augmented) serum and why neither Emma nor her magically manifested doppleganger would wake up, no matter how many times Hook stuck his tongue down the former's throat after Henry's failed forehead smooch or Regina zapped the bespeckled Emma with bolts of magic until her flannel dress began to smoke.

Henry had even tried to find answers in the original book that was finished now after his magic quill refused to pen anything in the new one to clarify what was going on beyond the point of the splitting serum taking effect... so the fifteen year old had now resigned himself to playing Pokemon GO in the waiting room.

Probably, Henry should have been more concerned about his mother being duplicated and mysteriously unconscious, but it wasn'tlike he hadn't seen one of his mothers doubled before. He'd had so much crazy shit go down in his short life that he honestly couldn't muster the emotional investment between bullshit school work, bullshit Author writing, trying to have a bullshit social life with his recently not-that-interested girlfriend, and bullshit hanging out with his grandpa and step-grandfather/step-dad in their perpetual frenemy bromance of trying to one-up each other in being the most dashing and important man in his birth mom's life.

It was really no contest at this point, which made David's enthusiasm kind of pathetic in Henry's opinion. Obviously, _he_ should have been Number One as Emma's _son_ , but he had been out of the running since he was like twelve and after putting up what he admitted was a weak-ass fight, he'd resigned himself to having only one mother who put him first in her life and pretending to be supportive of her and get along with _Killian_ while wishing he wasn't too good of a person to let the guy die in some convenient accident. He'd had that chance on that _Nautilus_ and fucked it because he couldn't break his mom's heart... even if he thought she was better off and a better person without the pirate in her life. I mean, all you had to do was look at her laying next to her and the glasses-wearing douplicate who could have been her a couple years ago and she looked like a prematurely aged drug addict. It was sad.

His family was fucked up, Henry decided as he captured a Charmeleon from David's lap and Hook's patience, what minuscule amount he actual had, ran out.

"This is madness!" the pirate growled at Nurse Ratched behind the counter as Henry was trying to grab a Rattata from his chest hair. "I demand to see Emma."

"Which one?" the nurse asked, tone utterly bored and unfazed by the pirate's anger.

"The real one, you bint! _My wife_. You bloody well know which one I mean!"

A nun passed by with a cart of flowers and Henry snatched a Vileplume, wondering not for the first time if those pink flowers from Camelot were also evil.

"I'll page Dr. Whale and see if he has an update," Ratched blandly responded but made no move to actually do that.

"Grrrrrrrrrr! Who were you in your other life!?" Hook demanded.

"That's for me to know and you to hope you never find out," she quipped. "Now sit your faux leather-clad pretty yet otherwise completely useless butt down and _wait_ before I have security escort you out, _Mr. Jones_."

"That's Deputy or Captian Jones to you! I wouldn't be caught dead in faux leather! And you can't tell me what to do! I am the law in this town, woman!"

"I only recognize law enforcement who have undergone state-mandated training and are licensed to carry a fire arm, never mind drive a car," Ratched responded snootily while flipping through forms. "And since the only one here, corrupt as she may be, is unconscious or dead while you are just an excersize in unapologetic nepotism who spends his time diddling the Sheriff's while she gets her family and fangirls out of parking tickets, I reserve my right to call your bullshit, _Deputy Captain Chlamydia_ , and _issue my own psychiatric hold on all of you_."

"Wha-I don't-I've never had _Chlamydia!_ You take that back!" Hook insisted.

"It says right here that you did," Ratched gestured to a chart. "When you were admitted after that car accident, you had significant seepage."

"SHUT UP, YOU BINT!"

"Gross," Henry groaned while everyone else looked disgusted.

"Which is the only reason," drawled Ratched at the teen, "that I didn't whack your bony backside for stealing those condoms from the clinic last week. Between this walking petrii dish as a role model, your lazy-ass birth mother who can't be bothered to get her lovers checked out before spreading her legs, your judgmentally questionable adoptive mother who banged a forest vagrant in a crypt covered in mold and rotting-corpse-seepage polluted ground water, your grandfather who had an extramarital affair under cursed amnesia and wasn't using condoms given his fake wife thinking she was pregnant while his previously prude of a mistress was skipping in here to get the strongest dose birth control pills available - which she stopped taking to have a do-over after failing with the first kid and to start her creepy-as-fuck-and-insulting-to-modern-feminists-everywhere Overly Fertile Princesses Club that celebrates the cliché happy ending of a submissive little twit with a tiara and a baby-stretched vag, and your _other_ grandfather having to get tested for forest diseases acquired from your adoptive mother's better dressed half, it was a relief that you even remotely understand safe sex."

"Hey, don't talk about my daughter that way!" Snow exclaimed. "Or my vagina!"

"I do not have any forest diseases!" Regina growled and then glared at Henry, "You stole condoms!?"

"I just want to be prepared like she said!" Henry defended. "I don't want to get a bunch of venereal diseases like Emma - and apparently you! Or have a kid when I'm still a kid! Violet would join that creepy Overly Fertile Princesses Club and I'd have to go to all those stupid dinner parties with those stupid princesses and their stupid princes. Seriously, like ninety percent of them must have eaten lead paint chips as kids or something!"

"We're not creepy and they're not dumb!" Snow harumped, which received a snort from Hook, an eye-roll from Regina, and David suddenly deciding to join the previous conversation.

"Did you say Emma has _VD_? As in-"

"Her vagina has seen more swabbing than the deck of the _Jolly Roger_ ," snarked Nurse Ratched.

"But... but..." Snow stammered.

"How can you possibly be surprised?" snorted Regina. "Besides just looking at what she's bedding, you never looked in her medicine cabinet?"

"I... I thought that was cold sore medicine."

"I can't believe you!" David growled at the pirate. "You gave my daughter your whore diseases!"

"It's not my fault, mate!" Hook huffed. "I finished the whole bloody bottle of pills Whale gave me even after Pan tossed us back to The Enchanted Forest when I pledged myself to celibacy until I could be reunited with my one true love. How was I to know I had some resistant strains?"

"That's why you get your junk tested again before even touching my daughter, son... _in-law that isn't going to help your ass from getting pounded_!" David snapped, throwing Hook up against a wall and removing his gun from his holster.

Snow sighed. "David, please, you can pistol whip him with his own weapon later in the parking lot."

"What!? Hey!" Hook huffed. "This isn't my fault! Emma knows it! She wouldn't have agreed to be my wife otherwise. She knows my love for her is pure even if my loins have plundered many an unclean-"

"Spare me the nauseating fake romance, you diseased manwhore," Regina cut him off, "and sit your unclean ass down before your dick falling off from the slutty barmaids you plundered in between drunk raping and infecting innocent damsels who popped out generations of congenital syphilis mental defectives is the least of your concerns," she snapped.

"I have not-"

"Please, during one of your blackout drunk stupors I bled you all over a map just to make sure Henry never touches one of your bastard decedents."

Unnerved, Hook sat down and demanded, "You didn't... tell Emma... did you?"

"About how many imbecile stepchildren and grandchildren and great-grandchildren she has running around this town thanks to your wandering dick over the past three hundred years? If she can't figure that out on her own, frankly, she deserves you."

"I thought you were Emma's friend," muttered Snow.

Regina snorted and told her, "I was the Evil Queen. If I didn't consider the two of you friends, I wouldn't have any. I mean, honestly, I let my lover's rapist who murdered my son's father move in with me, I was so desperate for companionship and then appointed her Henry's in-case-of-emergency guardian because Zelena is, sadly, more present as a parent than any of you and the only one here who doesn't think Henry should find true love by tripping at prom and seeing if whatever hole his dick falls into makes a baby. As shady a that nurse is, she's not wrong about that.

"And as pathetic as that is, that _you're_ happy to be friends with former mass murderers who tried to kill your family and did kill your fathers, I suppose I am more pathetic for having to settle for a family with critical thinking skills that make that beginning and end of _Flowers For Algernon_ seem happy in comparison. But I did horrible things. This is my punishment. Far worse than being stuck in a dungeon, of that I can assure you."

Snow and David scowled and Hook glared at Regina before taking a seat next to Henry, closer than any normal person would, and patted him on the back.

"Don't worry, lad, whatever happens, you've still got me. I might not have formally adopted you yet, but I consider you as good as a son of my own _currently very clean_ lions no matter what your other mum says and I'll look after you right and proper."

Henry rolled his eyes and sarcastically (not that Hook noticed) responded, "Great, thanks. That means a lot."

Everyone else lapsed into boredom and throwing nasty looks at Nurse Ratched for several minutes, until...

Dr. Whale returned to the waiting room suddenly and declared, "Congratulations, it's twins!"

"Funny," sighed Regina.

David jumped to his feet. "How is Emma? Is she awake yet? Do you know if anything was done to the potion? Is her duplicate dangerous? Can they be reemerged? Can we-"

"Why didn't my true love's kiss awaken her?" Hook butted in. "It must be a poison rather than curse then, yes? Because true love is the rarest and most powerful-"

"Bullshit of all. Yes I know," groaned Whale. "You all are so delusional basing your entire philosophy on a concept that's the equivalent of a Tinder hook-up between a sexual predator and slutty teenager. True love means absolutely nothing if it's entirely based on belief and feeling something to be true. I've heard less bullshit feeling-based policies from than son of an orangutan who thinks he's the best at everything when he's really just a hypocritical loser."

"He seems like a fine chap to me," said Hook.

"You mean you actually watch more than old pirate movies and pirate-movie-based porn?" scoffed Regina.

Whale continued, "Anyway, Emma is fine. She is awake. The serum was slightly modified but presents no danger to her or her sister's health."

"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, " _what_? Her _sister_?"

"That's right. _Her identical twin sister_ ," Whale said.

"WHAT!?" gasped everyone.

"It does explain why the replacement Emma suffered a rather swift decline in physical appearance so they frankly would probably be mistake for siblings a good several years apart than twins. I was always surprised when her bloodwork and urinalysis didn't come back positive for drug use. All the stress, pill popping wouldn't have surprised me.

"Anyway, I've surmised the impetus was Zelena's magic-siphoning kiss curse that caused the _Freaky Friday_ type situation... although in the same body, so... that's not really an accurate description is it? _Being Jon Malcovich_ perhaps?"

"Wait... what do you mean?" Regina demanded. "There were _always_ two of them?"

"We have... _two daughters_?" croaked out Snow and Charming.

Giving the pair a look that didn't say much for his thoughts on their intelligence, Whale confirmed, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Two babies who shared one physical body thanks to magic: Emma who has left over magical savior induced powers and seems to be the one you physically gave birth to and came to Storybrooke and broke the Curse. And the one you've been calling Emma for the past few years but never got a baby blanket of her own, the one who screwed up your meet-cute in the past and used that magic mostly to benefit herself in between sessions with Archie to rant about being the Savior interfering with her pirate-smooching time, which was the rest of the time in the back booth at Granny's. I had to put out a public health warning about that booth lest someone get herpes from the condiment bottles. Or syphilis. Or gonorrhea... not to mention crabs, and not the kind that make a good deep fried sandwich with a side of slaw."

"I hate this bloody hospital!" Hook growled.

"But how," Snow asked, "I mean... I never knew... I was really carrying _twins_?"

"It had to be the spell The Apprentice cast on Embryo Emma to remove her darkness," stated Whale. "It's the only thing that explains the unusual absorption rather than, well, the usual outcome given the hereditary condition known as Evil Twin Syndrome."

"I'm sorry," Regina cut in, "but did you say _'Evil Twin Syndrome_ '?"

"Yes, that's right. Emma's sister, let's call her 'Bella'."

"Bella?" asked Hook, brows furrowed.

"Yes, you know, Bella Swan. _Twilight_?" Whale stated to blank stares. "Emma and her sister are like... _Harry Potter_ and _Twilight_ ," he explained. "As the great Maine philosopher Stephen King said, 'one is about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. The other is all about the importance of having a boyfriend.' Emma is The Savior. Bella is a skank obsessed with her centuries old yet unnatural youthful, pale, leather-clad, emotionally-and-physically-isolating-from-her-family-and-also-undead boyfriend. Throw in some blood sucking and a not-gay werewolf and you two," he scoffed at Hook, "are a real life rip-off of that nauseating teen romance played by a syphilitic pirate and a thirty something woman acting like a dumb, slutty teenager. Which, from what I have read, is one of the hallmarks of Evil Twin Syndrome. Sexual promiscuity compounded by adolescent, narcissistic behavior."

"Hold on," interjected David. "If Emma has an 'Evil Twin' does that mean-"

"Your brother was one? Obviously," nodded Whale. "He was hereditarily predisposed toward evil behavior due to a blood magic curse upon your family known as 'Imago tenebrarum', which roughly translates to 'Mirror of Darkness' but I don't care for that magic bullshit so I am going with 'Evil Twin Syndrome'. You can thank Belle - the bookworm not Bella Swan the skank savior - for finding out the history. Or not. I understand you all mostly ignore her, which is probably why her brain tumor caused mental disorder went undiagnosed for years.

"But, anyway," Whale continued, "as I was saying, when Mommy Snow got preggers and had a shady sorcerer pull out not-even-a-fetus-yet Emma's dark potential without realizing her precious little zygote carried a curse from her daddy that caused her to split in two... well..." Whale smashed his hands back together.

"Of course," groaned Regina. "Like Gold said: magic abhors imbalance. That curse took away Emma's natural predisposition to make her own selfish choices - her darkness - which was also the equivalent of having too much goodness. I assumed she found balance in life by associating with criminals, and I suppose that was part of it, but the other half came from her sister."

"Yes, exactly," nodded Whale. "Lacking in darkness, Emma's magic absorbed her sister into herself to try and restore as much balance to her magic as possible, which effectively also gave her more than the natural amount of light potential, although not as much as it would with regular twins since her sister is, after all, an Evil Twin, who clearly took advantage of Zelena's magic-sucking spell to switch dominance and hijack her sister's magical ability, go back in time, switch things up to what certainly seems to be her benefit. Quite clever, really, though it would seem also subconscious, so driven her curse perhaps.

"Dr. Hopper is working on figuring that out," Whale explained, "and sorting through their memories which seem somewhat different and divergent at points. So perhaps the splintered timeline is related. Somehow Emma retained memories of the original timeline's past without acquiring the altered memories as her sister did upon returning to the present but yet does have most of her sister's memories created after that event, if not as clear and lacking in the emotional connection. She retained them but is fully aware that they are not her memories aside from rare, usually magic and savior-related incidents when it seems she had momentary control or what seems a shared control based on a common goal.

"Hopper posited a rather interesting theory that Henry was able to wake Emma with true love's kiss because the body that got stabbed was actually her skanky not savior sister's and their hearts were probably merged in some way so... anyway, on the matter of memories prior to Zelena's spell," Whale concluded, "things are bit more complicated for Bella who had no separate identity of her own for the first three decades of her life. But I'm sure a few years of therapy sessions can sort it all out for both of them."

"Wonderful. Two Emmas. Just what I need," sighed Regina.

"That's what Hopper said," snorted Whale. "Look on the bright side? You've gotten back an Emma whose life isn't entirely monopolized by a self-centered alcoholic with neurosyphilis-related brain damage but retained the one whose life is entirely monopolized by a self-centered alcoholic with neurosyphilis-related brain damage to keep Deputy Dildo from reverting to his mass murdery rapey ways-"

"Oi, doctor-patient confidentiality!" Hook growled.

"Yes, well," shrugged Whale, "you treat your police code more like guidelines, so I've decided to do the same. And now that I think about it, since Bella doesn't have any of her sister's goodness, you two might turn into _Natural Born Killers_. And yes, I need to get out more instead of spending my nights chilling alone with Netflix.

"As for the rest of you, honestly, how did you not think anything was wrong?" Whale demanded of the family. "I've been testing this woman's blood for syphilis and other degenerative diseases and coming up with concussion-related excuses for brain scans for years to find a medical explanation for her change in appearance and personality. Maybe I should order MRIs for all of you as soon as the new machine is installed! You might have irreversible brain damage that's hampering your reasoning ability."

"Yes, yes, Snow has suffered more head injuries than an NFL player," Regina drawled, "tell us something we don't know. Get back to this Evil Twin thing. I thought the Good Twins never survived? So how the hell is Charming here let alone Emma?"

"It gives new meaning to 'Vanishing Twin Syndrome' for sure," confirmed Whale. "Unchecked the curse consumes the Good Twin in the same way as rarely in nature a fraternal twin will fuse with its brother or sister early in embryonic development such that a few of those cells with remain present as, say, a kidney or even blood cells that will lead to confusing DNA results. Of course, from what I read, people have been trying various remedies for centuries including attempts at accelerating the pregnancy, which seems only to accomplish giving birth to one healthy evil baby and one dead not evil one instead of just the evil baby. We're still trying to figure out how that was avoided in the case of David's family."

"That gypsy charm!" Snow remembered. "Your mother gave it to me as she was dying. She said it was just supposed to tell the sex of our first born. I wore it the entire time I was pregnant. It's... odd really, now that I think about it I just felt... compelled to put it on the day before we went to find the Tree of Wisdom."

"Why wouldn't my mother have ever said anything?" David demanded, confused.

"Because all parents in the Enchanted Forest are stupid, selfish assholes?" answered Whale matter-of-factly. "We'll assume then that this 'gypsy charm' is the reason David survived and perhaps combined with that spell you two had cast allowed both of your daughters to coexist in one physical form with Emma being the dominant twin and her sister being a Parasitic Twin case, but instead of additional physical features it presented in occasionally erratic behavior. You might say they battled for dominance like Spock's Vulcan and Human side, but the Savior magic kept Emma on the Human side for the majority of her life."

"Aren't Vulcans the more logical, though?" asked Henry.

"Well, if you truly follow _Star Trek_ mythology through to the prequel series," Whale countered, "Vulcans are actually paranoid assholes who care a lot more about spying on and painting themselves as superior to other alien races than they then do about logic and religion. They just used that Surak fellow and his reformation as the perfect cover to seem like alien Buddhists.

"And, yes," the doctor sighed, "again I realize knowing all of that as well as anything about _Twilight_ reveals that I am a loser with no social life, but that's all your faults for trapping me in a world I hate full of people from other worlds that I hate. So there!"

Whale paused to think, the asked, "Where was I?"

"Explaining Emma's dual nature," said Regina, sounding a bit bored already.

"Ah, yes," Whale nodded. "Also, Evil Twins, like Vulcans, don't process alcohol well. So, Bella chumming around with a barely functional alcoholic when her sister was already - perhaps on _Bella's_ influence - prone toward drinking when emotional due to possible hereditary alcoholism didn't help curb her sociopathic tendencies."

"Hey! I am fully functional!' argued Hook. "In all ways!'

"Gross," groaned Henry.

"Emma is an alcoholic?" sputtered Snow.

Crossing her arms, Regina gave the younger woman a 'seriously' look and stated, "Exactly what were you doing every time we met at your apartment and she had her personal walking liquor store pour out his flask into her cup of coffee - the coffee she poured into it after pouring your hot chocolate 'with cinnamon' down the sink - or we met at her place and she was just straight up day drinking hard liquor?"

"I...I... why didn't you say anything!?" Snow croaked out, distraught. "She said they were switching to water!"

Regina shrugged. "All alcoholics say that. It was blatantly obvious and not my business. I probably drink three too many glasses of wine a day to deal with you."

"More than one is too many," Whale told her.

"See?"

"She was really pouring out my hot cocoa?" Snow sniffed. "But she loved that. We bonded over that."

"Well, you and your firstborn bonded over it," shrugged Whale. "You and your second born bonded over Cuban coffee and lies."

Snow gave Regina an accusing look.

"What? Was that supposed to be a big flashing sign that Emma was body-snatched?" the former Evil Queen grumbled "I just thought Emma was only pretending to like the stuff for Henry's benefit when she first got here and didn't know how to break it to you all that she hates the stuff and probably told him when they were living together in New York so it was old news and if you cared you'd ask her and if I said anything you'd snark at me to mind my own business. It's not like I lived with her for five months or anything."

Snow scowled.

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Henry interjected, "Emma was in charge until Zelena took her magic so Bella took over control, which mean's Hook's arm candy who's been criminally neglecting me since my uncle's coronation is actually my aunt?"

"Exactly," Whale nodded.

Hook frowned as it only then occurred, "So... the lad's not my stepson?"

"Not unless his actual mother wants to marry you and polygamy is legal here," said Whale. "This is clear grounds for an annulment.. even if it's not on paper since you married the woman who wanted to marry you, just under an identity that wasn't her own.. which... actually... that might also make the marriage fraudulent. You might want to check with Mr. K on that and see if you have to file a new marriage license after Hopper certifies that your maybe-not-wife is of sound mind. Also, she doesn't seem as keen on the name 'Emma' now, so you might also want to wait until she's figured that out as it'd be rather odd in the wedding video calling her 'Emma' in your vows when she wants to change her name to 'Eustance' or something. But as to your questions, the answer to both is hard 'no'."

Henry jumped up and threw a fist in the air, then told Hook, "You're not as big of a dick as you used to be, but honestly, calling you 'Dad' makes my balls crawl up inside my body."

Hook harumphed and crossed his arms while responding, "Yes, well, I never wanted to be your step dad, you big-nosed nerdy bookworm brat with an unnatural scarf fetish."

"At least my dick doesn't seep puss, _Killian_!" Henry retorted. "And for your information, the only reason I acted so thrilled about 'Operation Best Man' was so I could curse your rings!"

"Wait... _what_?" Hook sputtered. "What did you do to them!?"

"Not sure. I took a memory potion after!" Henry taunted.

"Henry," Regina scolded. "That is awful. Hilarious and no doubt appropriate. But still, very wrong."

Hook flipped them both off.

"David, this is all our fault," Snow moaned. "We were going to have twins! That's what those visions meant! We caused this!"

"Yep, all your fault," nodded Whale, "but also, if it makes you feel better being subverted by her sister for thirty years, Bella Eustance Skanky Swan wasn't able to hone her psychotic tendencies to their full capacity at puberty with the hormone changes that alter brain chemistry and had to settle for a delayed and rather pathetic attempt at evil puberty even with the help of the Dark One. As such, she is less of an 'Evil Twin' at this point as she is just a selfish jerk with a sex and rum addiction. Really,, you lucked out with your selfish, bad parenting decision and it turned out for the best, probably. I mean, on the other hand, Bella could have turned out like Zelena. She's one of the worst cases of Evil Twin I have ever seen."

" _Zelena_ is an Evil Twin? You never thought to mention _that_ before!?" Regina growled.

"Doctor-patient confidentiality?" shrugged Whale. "It's through her father's line. And honestly, I hate all of you and dealing with your bullshit. Knowing that green freak has a hereditary magical emotional disorder would have made you fawn over her and excuse away all of her horrible crimes with even more self-righteously misguided passion. I mean, I'm a fucking _necromancer_ , and I think you lot are a bunch of morally bankrupt assholes."

The Doctor picked at a hangnail and continued, "As I was about to say before that rude interruption, Zelena is an Evil Twin. She killed the child Cora was supposed to have in the womb. Her child subsequently killed its twin in her womb. It was stillborn, only partially developed with the accelerated pregnancy."

"I have no memory of that. I was there," Regina stated.

"The Blue Fairy knocked you all out and altered your memories after determining which one was the Evil Twin, and sadly it is Robin. So, congratulations," he told Regina, "you have an evil niece doomed to grow up to be a mentally unstable, homicidal bitch that given your mother's non-magical mental instability already has the brain scan of a serial killer."

"What... what about Henry?" asked Snow. "Is he...?"

"No, thankfully," Whale waved her off. "Apparently, Henry could not have this 'Heart of the Truest Believer' business and be an Evil Twin. Their hearts are blackened before birth, after all. The Blue Fairy had already determined that due to his conception in a world of limited and different magic, the curse could not sustain itself beyond the initial twinning. Since the curse kicks into baby-killing mode only once the embryos have functional hearts, Henry's twin never developed to that stage either as a failing of magic to continue its development or a failing of magic to protect it against regular physiological issues that cause pre-fetal miscarriage of a pregnancy or possibly some confusion of the curse by Emma's sister being joined with, so if she was already 'carrying' an Evil Twin the new one was disposed of.

"Whatever the reason, a magical analysis confirms the blood curse has run its course for Emma and was not passed on to Henry so neither has to worry about evil offspring. Which is not the case for Bella, so it's a good thing the pirate has been shooting blanks."

"WHAT!? That's not true!"

Henry snorted and Hook looked at his ring, then snarled, "Why you little-"

Before he could strangle Henry in Homer Simpson style, Regina stepped between them and addressed Whale, "You are treading on dangerous ground with your insubordination and frankly insulting manner over a very delicate family matter."

"What are you going to do? Put me in an orange jumpsuit and make me pick up trash at your next family picnic?" Whale scoffed. "I'm the only real doctor in this town. I've been wronged by a lot of you. You're lucky I don't raise all the dead you people have wronged and let them rip your arms off.

"Which reminds me," Whale told her, "you should make an appointment to check your hormone levels and see if any adjustments should be made to your next shot. Just because having ruined ovaries due to magic has kept you youthful long after most women would be suffering through menopause and turning into ugly old crones, doesn't mean you shouldn't keep on top of things."

"You really give less of a shit about doctor-patient confidentiality than Hopper, don't you?" Regina snarled.

"Not a bit. Prince Charming had a third nipple removed, Snow White really should think about bleaching her Wookie ass situation that makes her annual vaginal exams highly unpleasant, and from my examination of the Lost Boys, it seems likely that your son's unnatural pixie-dust-accelerated puberty has stunted his penis size."

"Awe, that's a shame, lad!" tittered Hook. "Already not having much to work with, I'd imagine."

"Actually," said Whale, "Henry's paternal line is predisposed to being above average. His father, even with his own presumed pixie-dust-accelerated puberty, was well endowed enough not to be embarrassed. Rather a shame, though. Both could have had award-winning careers as a porn actor and banged more ladies than you. Still a chance for Gideon, at least. Now Henry will still suffer the usual white male embarrassment in the locker room. Actually, this town is so ethnically un-diverse that he probably has a better chance of being struck by lightning than standing pantless next to a black penis, so-"

"Stop talking about my penis!" moaned Henry.

"It's all right, Henry," David reassured him. "Size really doesn't matter."

Regina, Snow, and Nurse Ratched snorted.

"Aaaaaaaaaaanyway," Whale continued, "where was I? Oh, right, I kept Robin's malformed Good Twin in a jar in my office. If you'd like to see-"

"NO!" everyone exclaimed, horrified and disgusted.

Shrugging again, not remotely bothered by the offended looks, Whale scoffed, "Your loss. It's pretty cool."

"Can we see our... daughters?" asked Snow.

"Sure, why not? Just be aware that Bella will be even less inhibited. Try to encourage good behavior with rewards, like you would be a bad-tempered dog. But by 'rewards' I don't mean make-out time with Captain Douchebag here as that clearly leads to bad decisions like covering up cold-blooded, racist homicide."

"I was cursed! And I am not racist!" Hook exclaimed. "I may be a lot of horrible things, but I am not racist. My not caring that I offered that wizard has nothing to do with race. I generally don't care about any of the wankers I've bumped off unless I want to marry one of their relations."

"Lovely," sighed Regina.

"Like you care," argued Hook.

"I care," glared David.

"None of you care," Whale told them. "Those two sociopaths. And you're a pussy-wipped fake prince who had to learn from a dimwitted little girl how to use a sword and lets a grown man who murdered his father call him 'Daddy'. My badly resurrected brother who killed our father had a better sense of wrong and right than you three sanctimonious shits and the rest of your family... save Gold, obviously. He buys me shiny new toys to thank me for my medical contributions to the well-being of his family while you just come in making demands of 'Dr. Whale help me have this baby because I forgot to make a new home birth plan without the psychotic witch trying to kill my baby so I had to leave the only place she couldn't kill me to a completely unguarded building filled with hundreds of innocent men, women, _and children_ '. Fuck all of you.

"Now, as I was saying," continued Whale, "Be aware that one of your daughters is a psychological mess after being freed of her sister's skank-o-rama freedom tour and the other is a selfish, amoral slut who only suffered even the slightest moral crisis because of her sister and is otherwise incapable of properly experiencing empathy due to her affliction which is essentially entirely your fault for not getting tested for MTDs - magically transmitted diseases - before doing the self-righteous heroes with two backs."

Whale then dropped his stethoscope like a microphone, declared, "Whale out!" and strode off down the hall.

"He's gotten bloody weird since bleaching his hair," muttered Hook.

"At least it's all his," snarked Henry. "I know you keep your magic rogain shit behind Aunt Skanky's herpes meds. Bet that's the sperm-reducing stuff Whale is prescribing you!"

"Don't call your aunt 'Skanky'," Snow snapped at Henry while David gave Hook a two-fingered eye threat.

"Parking lot, _mate_."

AN: The title is taken from the words of immunologist Peter Medawar who wrote about a particular case of human chimerism in _The Uniqueness of the Individual_ , "There is no telling how long Mrs. McK will remain a chimera, but she has now been so for twenty-eight years; probably, in the long run her twin brother's red blood cells will slowly disappear, and so pay back the still outstanding balance of his mortality." He was writing about a woman who had absorbed her twin early in their gestation and so still had his tissue in her body. Chimerism is rare, but it does happen.

AN2:: Even though Rumple and Belle attended the weird Last Supper dinner in the finale, I don't see Rumple having gone of his own volition. The mention of Belle's brain tumor will be explored in more detail much later in the story as it applies to her odd behavior in Season 6 especially and relates to a revelation about her mother's death and her amnesia. Once Belle's brain tumor was removed she returned to her more logical and loving self who was also more skeptical of The Charmings and did not generally interact with them socially given their blatant disregard early on for her safety and agency and ignoring of justice, something that means a great deal to Belle, as it did (and will) to the real Emma Swan as she tries to resume her life after its hijacking and being driven off a cliff by her sister.

AN3: I started this story when PokemonGO was the new craze. A description of the Rattata says: "It is not picky about where it lives—it will make its nest anywhere." While the Vileplume's "toxic pollen triggers atrocious allergy attacks. That's why it is advisable never to approach any attractive flowers in a jungle, however pretty they may be." Lastly, MTDs = magically transmitted diseases. Duh!

AN4: As for Whale's geeking out on _Twilight_ , I only ever saw some of the first movie when it was on HBO and turned it off because it was so very very very bad. Someone posted King's quote about _Twilight_ and _Harry Potter_ on Twitter and I had to use it.

Next up: Breaking the news to Savior Swan and Skanky Swan. (And No, Belle is not going to go by that name. or Eustance)


	2. Mirror Mirror

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

MIRROR MIRROR

"Stupid magic," Emma grumbled, glaring at her Jell-O. "Stupid Hook."

The door opened and she looked up, expecting Whale again, or maybe Archie, but instead it was her mother.

"Emma."

"Hey...," she managed, uncertain.

It was hard for Emma, working her mind around the things she did that she didn't really do. Or maybe it wasn't. But it was frustrating and infuriating to have her life not be her life, play out in her mind like a movie staring a bad impersonator and badly written besides. The sister thing was hard to take in.

"How do you feel?" asked Snow, pulling up a chair, working to get over the incongruous image of her daughter in a thick, not particularly flattering pair of glasses. She'd known Emma used to wear them before switching to contacts, but it was still odd.

"Well, I could go for a grilled cheese and fries instead of this crappy hospital food. And maybe a hot chocolate with cinnamon. Other than that, Dr. Whale said that potion didn't do any long-term damage, apart from the whole-"

"Having a twin sister thing," sighed Snow and Emma grimaced.

"Yeah, Whale explained everything and then Archie did a psyche evaluation," snorted Emma with a role of her eyes. "Not sure I trust Jimminy Cricket's Curse-acquired psychoanalysis skills when he didn't have me committed or put on anti-psychotics after I'd obviously suffered a sudden and severe personality change."

There was an obvious accusation in her tone and not quite meeting Snow's eyes she saw her mother purse her lips tightly before beginning, "Emma, we're sorry."

"How?" Emma asked, confused and a bit embittered. "How did you not know something was wrong?"

"We _did_ notice that you were different," Snow conceded, "but we didn't know all of what happened in your past, like how you became a bounty hunter or your friendship with Lily and that mess with Ingrid. We didn't know that you weren't... well... pretending to be something, to be what we wanted or expected, that Henry expected, when you came to town. Which maybe isn't a good excuse. But... it just seemed like you finally felt comfortable enough to be yourself. after that year apart"

"Dressing like Sandra Dee and marrying a rapist who married my son's grandmother and murdered my grandfather?"

"I happened to like that dress," Snow defended, sighing a little, "but as for Hook... your father and I felt as though we hadn't been supportive enough or understanding enough of your... complicated relationship with Neal, and you were falling in love again, and it was maybe an easier love without that past history, and we just wanted you to have an easier time of it than before, and than we did. It's what every parent wants for their children, even if it wasn't with the particular man we'd have chosen for any child of ours. You seemed happy, even if you had to fight for that love, even if it wasn't... maybe... what destiny should have owed you after everything you suffered. And though that love... It felt like you were finally letting us know you, and I suppose that led us to be accepting and encouraging of some of your - your _sister's_ more self-destructive choices."

"Which were most of her choices," scoffed Emma before amending a bit bitterly, "I really thought you guys knew me better than that."

"I... I thought we did too," sighed Snow. "If we'd _all_ been more honest in the beginning, perhaps things would be different. But all we can do is try to move forward from here, together, as a family."

"Not sure I'm ready for that," Emma argued, shaking her head. "Cursed to be a bitch or not, my sister treated my kid like crap. She took him to The Underworld to save her homicidal boyfriend who'd been attempting to kill Henry, and even when he wasn't, is either teaching Henry awful lessons or trying to destroy his self-esteem, often right in front of her! That's hard to forgive. And just as hard is the people who stood by and watched it happen and said nothing."

Snow let out a sigh, not having expected it to go this badly, but tried to be optimistic and encouraging. "No one is saying you have to, Emma. Just... try to understand our point of view. And your sister's."

"Yeah, well... at least she's only murdered a couple of people instead of full-on genocide of an entire species like Uncle James," Emma stated, "so there's that."

Emma shook her head and lamented, "Things'd be a lot easier though if I'd never saved Hook's stupid macho ass from needing to make me into a damsel in need of saving and just let him drown.. If I'd stood up more against my sister's sick pirate rape fantasies.."

"Emma!"

"It's true. She didn't fall for his charms first, she fell for wanting him to satisfy a disgusting fetish fantasy. And everything would be better if that scumbag was dead.," Emma told her. "That choice cost me my life, and for what? So my sister could marry my grandfatther's murderer? My son's step-grandfather? She wanted control. She got it. And I got to basically be her prisoner while she screwed over my happiness and other people's too.

"Like when Robin died, and you said that nothing was my fault, which is technically true. But it _was_ my sister's fault. What she did was horrible and wrong on so many levels and the worst sort of hypocrisy besides.

"When she went back in time," Emma continued, "she actually told Rumplestiltskin not to save Neal because taking away his dying a hero from him was wrong. But then a few weeks later she goes to Hell because who cares if Hook wanted to die a hero, she couldn't live without him which is somehow some super healthy manifestation of love at its best? That stupid bitch's itchy cunt kept me from having an actual conversation with my dead true love, the only chance I had to apologize for not saving him and I didn't get the chance to tell him back that I loved him too because that twit thought she could share her heart with an incorporeal deadbeat and you all went along with it because you were too stupid to realize that wouldn't work if Belle wasn't around to inject some logic into the conversation or just wanted to be supportive. Something you never were of me."

"Emma..." Snow exhaled, tears forming in her eyes.

"My sister got a freebie while I get to have memories of her cheesy-ass wedding and brainwashing my kid into loving his new step-daddy," Emma spat. "So, no, I'm not sorry that I wish I left _Captain Hook_ drown. Thanks to him and my sister and Regina's sister, I barely got the chance to be happy for a moment," she angrily sniffed. "And now what do I have?"

"You have your family," Snow told her.

"Do I? Or did mine cease to exist when my sister rewrote history?" Emma shot back as the door opened again, admitting an anxious-looking Henry who was clutching his book.

"Ah... hey... Mom?" he greeted and Emma smiled weakly, reminding him of her in the mental hospital. Was that his mom or his aunt or a bit of both? "I thought... I should write down your story. I mean... I guess your... ah... sister hasn't picked a name yet, but..."

"Sure, Kid," Emma agreed.

As Henry began asking questions about what it was like, how aware she was, how much control she had Snow saw a patience in Emma that she hadn't seen in her daughter's interactions with her son in years. _What have we done?_ she thought, sadly, slipping out into the hall.

* * *

"Grilled cheese, onion rings, and coffee with two shots of _espresso_ for my Swan Princess," Hook announced, setting the meal on his wife's bed tray with a wink that said only one of the shots was actually espresso, the other from his flask.

"Awesome, you're the best, baby!" (Not)Emma cooed and kissed him on the cheek. "But lay off the 'Swan' thing, huh? That's my sister's thing. She found hope," she rolled her eyes, "in that deadbeat puppet's version of that story."

"I thought you and August were friends, luv?" Hook asked, fighting a frown at attack on his pet name for his wife.

"No, that's just what a woman tells her boyfriend so he doesn't get jealous that she and some other guy each had an undeniable sexual chemistry and thought about screwing each other once upon a time," (Not)Emma said. "And even though she's so over said guy, he totally still wants to get in her pants with his hardwood. Not that I wouldn't consider a three-way if you were into it."

Hook frowned while David tried not to vomit as he returned his daughter's bag of clothes that the hospital had removed.

"Anyway," (Not)Emma continued, "I'd rather have my sis' original legal surname. At least I've got something that was always mine. Just changed the 'Miss' to 'Mrs'."

"That is true," Hook agreed with a smile. "Us Joneses should stick together."

"Hmmmmmm I have some ideas for how we can do that..."

David grimaced and cleared his throat, reminding both that he was in the room.

"So... this sister thing," (Not)Emma said after a gulp of rummed-up coffee. "You know, it explains a lot. It's no wonder it just felt so _liberating_ when we got dropped into the past. It was like... how had I been such a terrified goody-goody desperate to be liked? I felt transformed into a _realier_ me! Still had that pesky 'conscience' trying to ruin my fun, derail my goals, but I got them anyway."

"Aye, you did, luv," agreed Hook. "Finally stopped resisting my charms and gave in to true love."

"After fighting my fool of a sister," (Not)Emma rolled her eyes. "Well, her loss. I suppose I owe Zelena a 'thank you' for giving me the chance to get free and find true love. At least I wasn't too terrified of it to grab onto it - though it was a hell of a fight at first against that inner voice, which obviously was my sister. I mean, being the Dark One and my biggest fear was moving in with the guy I love? What kind of bullshit is that? But it was like an inner battle against my sister, so I get that. She obviously is jealous. She hates Killian and is still pining for her dead ex. I worked for love. _We_ did," she smiled at Hook.

"Aye,," said Hook. "I must admit, it's freeing to say that I'm still not sure what she ever saw in Baelfire, so it's actually a relief that was your sister even if it means my seduction was working on more of a subconscious level and had no effect on her. Really, it's even more romantic," he considered, smiling. "My charms were able to help draw out this lovely lass and finally set her free!"

"Yes, exactly," cooed (Not)Emma , batting her eyes. "Don't worry, baby. You don't have to compete with the memory of a dead loser with your wifey anymore!"

The pair began making out, much to David's discomfort. He looked away and focused on the TV in the corner. An old episode of _Star Trek_ was on and a goteed-for-some-reason Spock was talking with a bicep-flexing Kirk. He'd never actually watched the show other than vague Dark Curse-given memories...

"Also," Hook mused after pulling away, "I suppose it does erase any scruples over the whole mess of having been with Baelfire's mother, which some apparently find distasteful."

"Yes, I suppose that is a relief," grumbled David, turning back to the couple, pretty sure Hook had zero scruples. And now it was starting to feel like his daughter who didn't want to be called 'Emma' was equally apathetic.

"So, when do I get sprung from this joint?" (Not)Emma asked after finishing her sandwich. "We've got night patrol after this family dinner thing - we still doing that? - and I need to fill up the squad car's tank so we can go the whole night," she explained while giving Hook a come hither look.

"Aye, can't forget night patrol," nodded Hook with a leering reply.

"We'd take the Bug," (Not)Emma explained, "but the engine's been acting up and the heater smells. I think a squirrel crawled up and died in it or something."

David massaged his temples, trying to remember when Hook had grown on him enough to let him join in law enforcement activities on an official basis. The damn pirate really was like a syphilis infection of the brain! He'd been enduring the pirate for his daughter's sake... and now he had _two_ daughters. Could he dare to hope the other had better taste?

"I'm going to go see when you and your sister can be released," David told them, wondering if he could nick something stronger than aspirin from the clinic for the raging headache he could feel coming on.

* * *

"How did it go?" Snow asked David when they met back in the waiting room.

"Honestly? Other than being more... blunt and openly raunchy, she's not much different," sighed Charming. "She's still a pirate-obsessed bitch."

"Charming!" Snow gasped.

David sighed. "Oh, come on, Snow. We've both been thinking it since the Dark One mess. Our daughter is kind of an asshole who's been glued to Hook's side far longer than is healthy. I know we both struggled to accept it at first, though I have to say your method of acceptance by trying to turn her into a teenager out of the 1950s and squeeling over her dating life or that ridiculous wedding theme wasn't exactly the most productive method."

Snow crossed her arms and glared. "Well, then I guess you and your lack of fashion sense can be the one to go clothes shopping with Emma. And don't you dare get on my case about wedding planning. I know you take Hook out to beat up people who wronged you back home, David, despite everyone getting a 'clean slate' in Storybrooke. So you may say that you tolerate Hook, but I know a part of you likes him because he's your excuse to embrace your own dark side,. He's a... a surrogate for your brother who isn't driven by a curse to kill you. And we should just be grateful that our daughters won't have to endure that degree of darkness between them. Things could be a lot worse than one of them being in a codependent relationship. You can get therapy for that. You can't for a homicidal curse."

Running a hand over his head, David agreed, "I know you're right. I just feel... violated all over again, Snow. Every time I think that's the end of my family's secrets, another one pops up. How could my mother not tell me this?"

"Maybe Whale is right," she chuffed, "that all parents in The Enchanted Forest are assholes. Probably, though, she didn't know. Probably that's why your father agreed to give up your brother... and then went off on his own looking for him. He felt guilty for more than just giving him away."

"Maybe..."

"But we're in Storybrooke now. And we have to do what's right for our children, for both Emma who never asked to be a savior and her sister who never asked to be evil and we didn't even know existed to give a name. They're both essentially cursed, Charming. And maybe it was the meddling and manipulation, the secrets and lies of people we trusted who lead to this as much as our own mistakes and shortsightedness, but those people aren't here to hold accountable. It's just us and our daughters."

"And dinner tonight at Regina's," reminded David.

"And that. But it can't be that horrible, can it?" wondered Snow.

"You should probably bring your bow just in case."

* * *

AN: So, the Real Emma Swan has made a triumphant, if depressed, comeback while (Not)Emma has been freed of any scruples. The _Star Trek_ episode on the TV is "Mirror Mirror", one of the most famous of the original series in which Kirk ends up in The Mirror Universe, an alternate reality in which Star Fleet and the galaxy are militaristic, ruthless, xenophobic, incredibly violent, and for some hilarious reason Evil Spock has a gotee, thus originating the pop culture cliche (remember that _South Park_ episode?) that all evil twins have gotees.

Next up: Sartorial speculation and David and Emma have a father-daughter talk.


	3. Made in China

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

MADE IN CHINA

By the time David got to the nurses station to ask about his daughters being discharged, "Bella" had discharged herself and texted that she was going for a sail with Hook to clear her head... and hopefully not adopt that name as it would be hard to keep a straight face if she went with "Bella" after the movie scenes Henry had found on YouTube about that dumb teenager and her vampire boyfriend.

Emma's reunion with her son was awkward to put it mildly and abbreviated, perhaps for the best, by Whale who'd grudgingly bent the visiting hours rules for them until Nurse Ratched bent them back and declared something about the doors hitting their asses on the way out... even though they were sliding doors.

While (Not)Emma was off sailing, Emma, who had no house, no car, and no cell phone accompanied Snow and David back to their farmhouse after collecting a few things from her sister's and from the Sheriff's Station. Thankfully, sentimental as Snow was, she'd kept boxes of Emma's things left at The Loft that Anna had told them they could toss out when they moved, so Emma had some old clothes her sister had left behind in her own move.

Thus began the morning of sorting through boxes and doing laundry to get the musty scent out of clothes so Emma could begin reassembling her life and identity.

It was really too bad that they hadn't been able to afford keeping The Loft as a second residence or even to sublet, David considered. He'd seen the sad look in Emma's eyes when they passed it on the way here. Maybe that had been a safe space for her... even though her sister couldn't wait to flee from it and her screaming newborn brother. At the least it was where they'd shared some of their first family memories, and she hadn't gotten to say good-bye to it. It was already obvious that Emma shared Snow's sentimentality, even if she'd hid it well enough that her sister's lack of holding onto things, more like David, hadn't seemed odd. After all, Emma was supposed to be putting an awful and unhappy past behind her, so it had seemed perfectly reasonable to them to cast off those old things after her Dark One stint and embrace everything new and happy.

Perhaps it wasn't, though, he realized as Emma carefully sorted through the little trinkets in her cigar box of momentos, many not in the good condition that her sister had left before her sing-off with Fiona. Or... maybe where Fiona's curse had stashed them in the evidence room which turned to have a rat problem they weren't aware of until just now.

"I really don't want to be an inconvenience," Emma muttered, looking around the guest room and pulling David from his thoughts.

"You're not an inconvenience," David assured her. "Neal will love company. Just be warned he'll wake you up at five and demand bedtime stories. Really, he'll be thrilled. Your sister has never really spent time with him."

"Yeah, I know," sighed Emma. "All her free time is taken up banging Hook... or going to Archie to try and shut out my objections to her banging Hook, which he was happy to do. He's nice, but Archie seriously sucks at his job."

"Well, Archie did accidentally get Geppetto's parents murdered by his parents because he trusted Rumplestiltskin," David reminded. "And he also protected Geppetto's selfish interfering with a plan to save humanity rather than ensuring you got to come to this world with me or your mother so you wouldn't have to grow up the way you did."

"Yeah, that too," Emma snorted and David shrugged.

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why Snow picked him to be our court advisor and designed conscience of the kingdom. Not that I think Hook was any kind of hero for abandoning his half-brother after killing their father, but at least he knew it would be wrong to just take in the kid whose parents he killed and pretend they were cool."

"Well, probably only because Neal called his bullshit on that after finding out Hook was involved in his father killing his mother," Emma countered as she fold the plaid pajamas she'd bought in New York after thinking her Boston apartment burned down... instead of weirdly still being rented in her name and apparently paid for by magic somehow. Like Neal's apartment it seemed... and now her place in New York. She had three apartments she couldn't use. Seemed like a waste.

"Hook handed Baelfire over to Pan for spite," Emma continued explaining, "knowing he would torture and abuse him for centuries, by the way, and never once tried to rescue him and never told Henry either. My sister found out from Tiger Lily and Tinkerbell, but she could give two fucks about Henry's father and stuck her fingers in her ears at anything that painted her previous Killykins in a bad light. But she was cool with him murdering our grandfather, so what's handing over the child of the woman he claimed to love to be tortured for centuries, right? And that asshole made _my son_ his best man at his fucking wedding? If I'd been able to get control back, I'd have pushed that one-handed bastard off the roof and unlike the time he jumped to get some Dark One attention, I'd have made sure no one could keep him from going _splat_."

David rubbed a hand over his face. "Emma, whatever Killian did in the past, he has done his best to change, to be a better person for-"

"My sister that he's made a worse person than she could have been," Emma cut him off and pulled more clothes out of a box. "I get it. You're best bros now with my sister's husband. Sorry if I still see him as the man who left me to starve to death, threatened to rape me, left us all to die to save his sorry, syphilitic dick, and then decided to relentlessly pursue me to stick his dick in me five minutes after the man I loved died. _Twice_. You can all _decide_ to see that as lovely for their epic romance, but that doesn't make it not actually disgusting and perverted to anyone who hasn't been drinking fairytale bullshit Kool Aid their entire life. And thanks for inviting my son to Jones Town, by the way. It feels _so great_ that Henry looks up that asshole."

Not really sure what to say, David settled for, "A floor lamp. I'll get one from the livingroom. Be right back!"

David headed out of the room leaving Emma to finished hanging her small assortment of clothes in the closet, glad she had enough to get by for awhile since Storybrooke didn't have much that wasn't out of an L.L. Bean catalogue or a Renaissance Fair. Unfortunately, a lot of the New York stuff was plaid outfits and stripper heal boots that Emma chalked up to Regina's last-moment memory spell badly mashing up Emma's actual past flannel fashions with her own dominatrix fashion fetish, because even Emma's sister had abandoned the stuff in a moth-filled box that was now in the dumpster out back.

There were a few pre-Cleo things, mostly that flannel, stuff that wasn't exactly fashionable for a thirty-plus year old woman... not that they had been for a twenty-seven year old woman acting like she was stuck in arrested development at eighteen.

Emma supposed she'd kept the stuff in part because she'd maybe settled in Boston long enough to actually start keeping stuff, but mostly unsure if the bounty hunter thing would end up being permanent and if the wardrobe she adopted to look badass instead of a novice would end up in the bottom of her trunk, just a costume from a brief phase of her life that had failed.

It was here in Storybrooke, really, in the eyes of Henry, Graham, and Mary Margaret - even Archie - that the whole jeans, boots, leather and tanktops look had started to feel like she'd earned it, that it could maybe even be her instead of an act, like it was some superhero outfit being passed down. Like maybe Henry finding her was some karmic 'you're forgiven' from Cleo.

Now they were just clothes again, Emma considered glumly. Her sister had co-opted the jacket, transformed it from an orphan's armor as she impersonated a real hero to a savior's cape as she... well... her sister was no hero, which is maybe what sucked the most about the whole thing: being a selfish jerk while everyone praised her for being so amazing and selfless... while Emma had spent her months in Storybrooke struggling to do the right thing and being so often criticized for it. She'd had very few moments to shine, to break through her sister's dominant personality... without even really being aware she was doing it, and usually, it seemed, when no one who cared enough was around to notice. Even they'd maybe been more of an unaware team taking down the Black Fairy, it was her sister who still had the control after emotions settled, after Emma's duty as a savior was complete. Maybe she had her sister to thank for a loophole that kept her from dying, but she didn't feel particularly thankful when the life she'd finally returned to felt like she wasn't entirely welcome in it.

At least her old denim jacket was here. Even if it smelled a bit musty, it felt familiar in a way that wasn't warped in a _Twilight Zone_ kind of way like everything else. After discarding the top half of the flannel and tights get-up that the magical-splitting had dressed her in, Emma pulled on a suede skirt and button-down shirt that had a stain on the front she vaguely remembered as raspberry jelly from a donut one morning in her deputy days when the bakery was out of bear claws. The jacket hid the stain well enough, so at least she could go to dinner looking presentable, even if she felt like a complete mess.

Sitting down on the bare mattress, Emma lamented that it felt like her sister had been subtly sabotaging her happiness her entire life, even if it wasn't intentional. Stealing things. Abandoning Lily. Coming up with that stupid _stupid_ plan to steal those watches. Breaking into that city hall. And most of all: giving up Henry.

Emma sighed while picking up her keepsake cigar box retrieved from the Sheriff's Station under piles of boxes in the evidence room where her father had half-rememered seeing it and someone had stashed it after her sister last sorted through it before her wedding. Rats or mice had gotten in, naturally, and chewed a lot of the stuff. She'd excused herself to the bathroom to cry - both because of the damage, but also that her keychain was there unharmed.

She remembered the relief upon seeing it then. She'd worried it was gone for ever, but the Dark One transformation spell must have somehow put all her old jewelry in the box. Maybe it had been able to sense her presence and preserved those parts of her while at the same time further liberating her bitchy sister who felt no connection to any of this stuff, even when some of it symbolized selfish or stupid things she influenced Emma into doing. It had given her enough fight to project some of herself that day, to be open with her son and fill her heart with love when that fake fairy ripped it out... but that and her sister's awful rendition of her song weren't enough to stop Fiona's curse. Maybe _she_ could have, but she'd fucked up and fallen for Zelena's trick and lost her life to her sister whose darkness always muted her light, twisted up her destiny into something toxically drawn more to Hook than her family. But then, if she'd been in control, maybe she would be dead. Maybe it would just be her sister now living her nasty version of Emma's life...

It was a mess either way, Emma decided, as she looked back at moments in her life when she felt almost schizo, like someone else was in her head encouraging her to do or not do something; now it made total sense and it pissed her off for all the years she'd carried self-loathing over that shit, kept little momentoes to remind her that she'd fucked up and it was all her fault. Only it wasn't exactly.

Every time she'd tried to do the right thing, her sister's darkness would feed on her insecurities and abandonment issues, Emma now realized. Regardless of which one was in control. Always to get the upper hand, to persuade her to run away, to steal, to not let her walls down and instead distrust and/or use people who could have helped her make something of her life without unnecessary death, without going a decade as a miserable, guilt-ridden, self-loathing loner stuck in arrested emotional (and fashionable) development who was prone to inexplicable moments of reckless selfishness that just kept heaping on the guilt until a pretty bad boy rapist came along that got her sister's panties wet enough to hijack Emma's life.

She'd felt like she must be such a horrible person to do things like that and feel nothing in the moment.

It was disturbing to realize now that her sister's worst qualities had so easily taken over at times.

And it was disheartening how little effect Emma's light, her compassion, had on her sister when her twin was the one calling the shots. How infrequently she came out. Okay, sure, it won the Final Battle, but when it came to the less dramatic things in life, her twin always seemed to win.

She'd heard someone say once that darkness was fast and furious while light was a slow burn. Mostly she just felt burned and kind of nauseous about officially meeting her sister for the first time.

Emma wasn't really looking forward to tonight,but she obviously couldn't avoid her twin. They'd have to reach some sort of... agreement like Regina and her Zelena had, she supposed... though no way in Hell would she live with that selfish bitch!

"Here, this should work," David interrupted her thoughts, plugging a lamp into the outlet in the corner. "Now we just need the linens and you're good to go."

"Yeah, just need to figure out everything else in my life," Emma sighed as she affixed the necklace's clasp and squashed down the anger she still felt at her sister, at what the other woman's selfish hypocrisy might well have cost her while she got to have it all.

"Hey, everything will work out," David told her, slipping an arm around her shoulder.

"Will it?" Emma countered while fastening Graham's shoelace to her wrist. "She lived my life. She raised my son. I lost Henry _again_ , but to someone pretending to be _me_. A really shitty mom version of me. I can't... I can't share him with _her_. I just _can't_."

"We'll sort it out, Emma," David stated. "I promise."

"And then what? She took my happy ending and ruined it. How do I forgive her for that?"

"She wasn't trying to. You forgave Neal, didn't you?"

Her shoulders stiffening, Emma replied, "That's different. And that's not fair. You don't get to bring him up the way you and Mom handled things in The Enchanted Forest. And the way you just... shrugged off his funeral and pushed me at Hook. Maybe my sister didn't care about that either because she didn't need pushing. But I do. That was my happy ending. Neal and Henry. Half of that is dead and the other half wants to be a pirate when he grows up. You and Mom supported that, but you didn't support me. I can't... I just can't deal with that now, okay?"

"All right," David allowed. "But don't hate your sister. Deep down, under that selfishness and greed, your sister just wanted the same things you did, the same things my brother did: to have someone put her first, instead of their own legacy or ambitions."

"Yeah, and she chose Captain STD," snorted Emma, "who only puts her first so he can ogle her ass."

"Just... try to keep an open heart and mind," David encouraged. "Your sister wanted her own story, and while I don't fully understand what either of you experienced, just from what it felt like for me when I started remembering my pre-curse life with your mother, I was confused and angry and it felt like someone was taking over my life, controlling me, influencing me into making decisions I didn't want, that I knew were wrong - or even that I knew were right - but it didn't feel like I was the one making those choices.

"That's what was the hardest," he said, "that whether I agreed or not, whether I wanted to be with your mother or Kathryn, work at the pet shop or move to Boston, it was like some other force - the Curse - was manipulating me, taking away my free will every time I got just a smidgen of it. If that nearly broke me in just four months, I can't imagine a few years of existing in that state - let alone half a lifetime and having never known what it's like to be in control of your destiny."

"I know it's not her fault," Emma conceded, "but it just... I feel like all my dreams have been ruined while she got the happiness I was working so hard to earn. Everyone was there for her, happy for her, fighting for her. While I was trapped and no one was fighting for me. No one even noticed I existed. It feels like being eight years old all over again and giving up on that talent show because no one gave a shit about me. No one even saw me."

"Emma..." David swallowed thickly and pulled his daughter into a hug. She remained stiff but didn't pull away. He held her for a long before pulling back and telling her, "I am sorry. But we're going to fight for you and your happiness now, I promise."

"What little is left of it," she sighed miserably. "All I have is a box of half ruined trinkets."

"I know it feels that way," David replied with a sigh. "Sometimes things happen and we don't find the answers we need until it's too late to make the right choices. We can't go back. But you can make new good moments. We all can. We didn't know that we'd lost you, but we're so happy to have you back."

"Yeah," Emma agreed with a forced smile and fake enthusiasm. It didn't feel like it. It felt already like she was an unwanted surprise, a complication - a burden. They were supposed to have fixed their daughter, gotten her married off to her true love in perfect bliss, but now they had a broken Emma back in their new house (that didn't feel like a home to her) and the one they thought they'd fixed was actually more messed up than they could have possibly imagined.

"Emma, please know that whatever you think of the choices your mother and I made, and whether or not you can forgive what they've cost you, you have more than just a box of trinkets."

David pressed a kiss to his daughter's forehead and then retreated from the room.

After her father left again, Emma walked over to the closet with an armful of clothes and began hanging up her meager outfits in this house that felt like part of a different family's life, not hers, a story that had started long after she wasn't part of it. She felt like a stranger here, like standing outside the window in _What a Wonderful Life_ \- or like she'd just been dropped into another foster home. This wasn't the happy beginning she'd signed on for.

Emma's fingers curled momentarily around the old thrift store maternity dress with its ugly flowers that she'd kept in her box with her baby blanket. The rats had liked it more than her blanket for some reason -maybe the lack of magic in it to keep them away - chewing enough holes that it looked more like a rag than a dress. The anger and bitterness surged that her sister had taken something from the only truly happy period of her life and warped it into her own symbol of actual happiness and let it... rot away with all the paperwork she never did.

Emma knew it wasn't fair. Her twin had no real, concrete, memories of her own from then and had to extract bits and pieces of meaning for herself. It still hurt, though. It was _hers_ , even if it was just a stupid dress, and every time she had put on some ugly boutique dress or top with stupid flowers on them to emulate that moment, to say "I found Tallahassee with someone else" felt like an intentional "fuck you", even if it wasn't.

She was clutching her keychain again, Emma realized, like she did on her way to Tallahassee, hoping it was all a mistake. There was no mistake this time. Neal was dead. She wanted to believe if she closed her eyes she'd feel his true love... but all she felt was the metal warming in her hand and opening her first all she got was the tiny imprint of "Made in China" on her palm, less conspicuous than the Dark One branding that had sealed Neal's fate; and it faded quickly away, unlike the pain in her heart that burned worse than the day she'd buried him. She'd been numb then and never got chance to be anything else... until now.

Emma hated it. She hated that she had lost something true and precious and no one else seemed to care.

A thought surfaced, bitter and spiteful as she heard the front door opening and her brother's babbling.

"Emma-" her mother gasped out on her swift dash down the stairs toward the door.

"I need to run an errand before this family dinner thing," she cut her off. "Can I borrow the truck?"

"Ah... sure," David agreed.

The door was already shutting behind her and Snow gave her husband a worried look.

* * *

Next up: Family dinner. What could go wrong?


	4. Witches & Bitches

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

WITCHES & BITCHES

In retrospect, Regina realized that she should have talked Zelena into not attending this particular family dinner, though no amount of reasoning ever did seem to work with her sister. So it was maybe inevitable that the redhead would greet Emma with an inappropriate quip and Emma would, in response, punch Zelena so hard that the former Wicked Witch ended up flat on her ass with blood spurting out of her nose and looking utterly shocked that the woman usually apathetic to her taunts had suddenly reacted so violently.

In retrospect, Regina also probably should have informed her sister about the whole twin thing, but she had her own personal reasons for being presently ticked off with Zelena and the potential for some reaction that ended badly for her sister had been too good to pass up.

Regina was reformed, but part of that Evil Queen darkness would always be a part of her.

"You little bitch!" Zelena shrieked.

"You psychotic murderer rapist witch!" Emma spat back.

"I thought we were friends! We hugged it out at your wedding!"

"That cheap-ass eighties soap opera human chess board _way off Broadway_ shitfest was not my wedding!"

Just then the front door opened with the arrival of Emma's twin and _that_ was the expression that Regina was going for.

She hauled her idiot sister up and told her, "That one's the Evil Twin," she gestured to the woman with no make-up and hair done up in a ponytail. "You know about those, _sister_. Naturally, she doesn't give two fucks that you killed _that one's_ lover. And if _she_ does, that's her right."

"You murdered Henry's father just to laugh about it and torture _his_ father and then rape a man to get yourself a baby!" Emma snarled. "I thought your sister's fraudulent adoption was shitty, but you're disgusting! You should be rotting in that cell!"

0"Yes, well, I suppose your sister has a very different idea of justice and mercy than you," Zelena scoffed at the blonde in glasses and curls.

Regina interjected, "A broken nose is nothing compared to what either of us deserves for the despicable things we've done, Zelena. So shut up and go make sure your rape victim's child isn't eating all of the cookies."

Zelena glared at her. "This is because of the other night isn't it? I said I was sorry."

"You didn't mean it," Regina huffed in response.

"You know what?" Zelena scoffed while using magic - because, of course, that sacrifice like Hook's ship lasted about five minutes - to fix her bloody nose, "I think I'll skip this family dinner and take Robin to Granny's."

"Don't let the back door hit your bitch ass on the way out!" Emma called after her.

"I'm sorry about that," Regina sighed which earned a glare from Emma.

"Like you're sorry about making your batshit crazy _evil_ rapist sister legal guardian for the child whose father she murdered in cold blood? Or how about raping and murdering Graham? Save your hollow apologies for someone who believes that completely fucked up view of justice and morality... so... pretty much anyone in this town but me, apparently!'

"Harsh," (Not)Emma remarked.

(Not)Emma snarked, "I can see this family dinner is going to need lots of alcohol. Nice glasses, by the way. Not sure if they're an improvement on the Mr. Magoo ones or a sad attempt to recapture a dead dream."

"There's wine chilling in the kitchen," sighed Regina.

"Great, I'll get it."

"Naturally!" Emma scoffed. "You can't go twenty-four hours without drinking. Switching to water my ass."

(Not)Emma just rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen.

Hook made to follow and Emma stepped in his way. "Oh look my sister is going somewhere and her pet pirate absolutely has to follow because he can't be more than five feet away from her for more than five seconds or he suffers separation anxiety. Or did you just finish your flask on the way and need to maintain that buzz so you don't go through withdrawals while on night patrol: _also known as having sex in_ _ **my**_ _car_?"

Hook glowered at her. "I won't let you make my wife into a villain just because she opened her heart to love while you continually rejected it. You and I, we could have had something. It was you who first drew me in. I'm sorry you're so terribly jealous that we only got one real kiss and the second awakened your sister so that we might embark upon an epic and eternal romance. You lost your chance, luv. Best to just accept it."

Emma scoffed. "Seriously? I didn't 'draw you in', you pussy-grabbing asshole. You stalked and bullied me because you either couldn't stand a woman being immune to your sick charms or I reminded you of Milah and you had some sick need to shag her grandson's baby mama. I just wanted you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone, and I'm sorry that backfired and encouraged your skank ass into coming after me even harder like some sick sexual predator.

"You. Disgust. Me," Emma stated pointedly, "and having any kind of carnal knowledge of you, even if you were physically doing it with my sister, makes me want to vomit. The only thing epic about your romance is the failure it's going to end up being when everyone finally pulls their heads out of their asses and realizes that, hey, just because two dipshits who want to fuck each other can break a curse with a smooch doesn't mean the magic you're all calling 'true love' actually is. Sometimes it's just two eternally horny assholes being duped by a god who wants to screw over his brother using the filled-with-true-love-by-a-stupid-song heart of a slutty woman's twin sister. So don't flatter yourself, _Killian_. I'd rather jab myself with a sandpaper covered vibrator than your sword."

"On second thought," retorted Hook with a scowl, "I'm glad that something ran its course rather quickly. I'd forgotten how caustic you were. I thought it was simply the wall around your heart, but apparently you're just a bitch."

"Better a bitch than a pussy. A pussy and a doormat. Such an epic couple," Emma snorted.

"At least we are one," (Not)Emma snorted, returning with a full glass of wine. "You're just a sad little spinster."

"And you're a mousy, needy, cruel, selfish, little lying Stepford wife who tied herself to a rapist in a musical embarrassment of a wedding," Emma retorted. "What do you see in him? Did he imprint on your evil fetus self like one of those creeps in those vampire/werewolf movies during a song and dance number that no one conveniently remembers outside of a story that just stupidly appeared in that book when you were having the savior shakes?"

"You mean when you were dying of embarrassment over Henry playing that lame song of _yours_. It hurts to be the loser, doesn't it," (Not)Emma retorted.

"I'll show you what hurts, sister," Emma snarled back.

David tried to intervene, "Girls, there's no need to get nasty. We-"

"STAY OUT OF THIS!" they both snapped.

"I think I'll get another bottle from the cellar," said Regina.

"I'll help," Snow offered.

"I'll just take these mini quiche out to the deck then," decided David.

"I'll get napkins!" Henry was quick to add.

The foyer cleared out in a hurry and Emma herself brushed past her sister into the kitchen, intending to get some ice for her hand. Of course, her sister followed.

"A rather homely bitch too," (Not)Emma amended. "Those glasses are ugly, sis. And everyone knows those curls are fake."

Emma shut the refrigerator and glared as she responded, "You're going to call _me_ ugly? Really? Have you looked in the mirror since your ass fell back up out of that time portal? Your face matches your filthy snatch. Not wearing make-up doesn't make you empowered and not trying to impress anyone when you can't be a room with your husband and not drape yourself all over him like a piece of clothing. And speaking of, wearing designer dresses with ugly flowers on them doesn't make you pretty or feminine or your skanky ass romance true, it just means you have shit taste in fashion. Like Captain McBaldy has in toupees."

The punch shouldn't have been a surprise given Emma's reaction to Zelena. Different as they were made by the Evil Twin Curse, they _were_ twins.

Glasses broke and the Emma slammed, surprised, into the refrigerator, scattering magnets on the floor.

"I got it from you, sis," (Not)Emma hissed. "You're the one who kept me prisoner for thirty years."

"That wasn't my fault!" Emma snapped in return. "That happened because of the spell our parents had cast. Be mad at them, not me! But you can be mad at me for this!" she sneered, pulling out her mother's phone that she'd grabbed from her pocket on the way to the door.

With a triumphant smile, Emma played the video of the little bonfire she'd made on the roof of the apartment... with her sister's wedding dress _and_ marriage license.

"I guess Mr. K's eyes aren't that good either. He was ever so happy to hand that over to Sheriff Jones. Said I was making a copy. I wasn't. Although you're marriage is apparently a fraud anyway, isn't it? Since _I'm_ Emma and _magical vows_ matter in this town. You're just a nameless parasite who woke up one day and decided to do a cosplay of 'If Grace Kelly married a 300 year old rapist in 1983 on top of a shoe store with astroturf and moldy curtains and left over floor tiles from a motel basement in front of a paid studio audience'!"

"You... YOU BITCH!" (Not)Emma snarled, shoving Emma into a cabinet hard enough to shake the glasses inside. "I may have been your unwanted parasite, but you're sad and jealous and pathetic!" she continued. "The house with the picket fence was _your_ dream, wasn't it? You wanted to share that with _Neal_. But now that loser is dead and I'm the one living the Tallahassee dre-"

The counterattack was magical, throwing her sister across the kitchen and into Hook, knocking them both to the floor along with a bowl of apples.

"SHUT UP!" Emma shouted as they picked themselves up. "If you didn't have such a fucked up idea of what love is and distilled everything to a pretty boy who wants to jab you with his dick, maybe I'd still have my true love! You were so fucking obsessed with your dirty pirate!" she seethed. "Every time I wanted to talk to Neal, you were pulling me toward 'Killian'! I didn't even get to have coffee with him before he died!"

(Not)Emma scoffed. "Please, it was your fear of abandonment that kept you away from him as much as my petty revenge and lusting after someone else. He died because you weren't strong enough to even try true love's kiss. You were afraid you didn't love him enough and it wouldn't work and then he'd die knowing you didn't even want Tallahassee with him anymore. That part of my vows was all you, _Emma_. You were made of true love, you used it to save your kid, and you _still_ didn't believe in it for yourself. How _sad_ is that?

"And I mean the headstone you picked out was lazy as shit too. 'Loving son'. If you really cared you'd have put your feelings in granite. So don't try and pin that crap on me, coward!"

" _I WAS GOING TO GET IT CHANGED WHEN I SAW I PICKED THE WRONG ONE AFTER THE FUNERAL!" Emma shouted back, "BUT YOU KISSED THAT SCUMBAG AND DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT NEAL! YOU EVEN TOLD HIS FATHER NOT TO SAVE HIM BECAUSE THAT WOULD TAKE AWAY HIS DYING A HERO. HOW IS THAT BETTER THAN GETTING TO LIVE TO BE THE FATHER HE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE? AND HOW WAS IT HEROIC WHEN YOU LET HIS KILLER LIVE AND RAISE HER OWN KID THAT SHE GOT BY RAPING A GUY THAT YOU THEN GOT KILLED TO RESURRECT YOUR DEADBEAT ASSHOLE FUCKBOY!?"_

"HE'S NOT A DEADBEAT!" (Not)Emma yelled back, grabbing Hook's sword from his belt - because the pirate really couldn't stand to not be loitering within reach of her. "AND HE'S MY HUSBAND, YOU PATHETIC JEALOUS BITCH!"

* * *

"... You don't know that what Whale said is true," Snow told Regina as they sat on the patio enjoying the mini quiche with glasses of wine or, in Regina's case, she'd gone straight to hard cider.

"But it has merit," Regina argued. "You've seen those disturbing nature shows with the baby monkeys that starved and got depressed and crazy with their useless wire frame fake mothers versus those that clung to the fuzz-covered ones that made fake monkey sounds and gave them food. I was raised by a wire-framed woman who gave me nothing but insults and abuse. The first sounds I must have known where her laughing cruelly while crushing other people's hearts. There was no constant, no touchstone otherwise, just silence. I was deprived of something vital, natural, that all children are supposed to have."

"But not all do."

"No, not all," snorted Regina. "But now I can't help but worry about Robin. Her mother has a bona fide mental disorder. And to think I named her Henry's guardian if anything happened to the rest of us. How could I not know that? And what does it mean for my niece? Was I right to not contest Zelena raising her? If there's nothing to be done, if Robin is doomed to grow up... wrong... But if there's some way to prevent the curse from taking full control...?"

"I don't know," sighed Snow. "She has an illness that seems to amplify addictive and violent behavior as well as selfishness. Zelena had her whole life for it to grow into a full-blown psychosis and she's... better. She's taking medication and going to therapy and even if she's not... apologetic for anything bad she's done, she's mostly stopped doing bad things. Even if that's all that can be done for Robin, it's still something. Whale said that Em... our other daughter may need medication and therapy now that she doesn't have a... an uncursed individual able to act as a pseudo-conscience or fight against her curse with light magic that she doesn't have."

"Try getting that woman into therapy even with a a pseudo-conscience," snorted Regina.

"That's not fair. She actually did talk to Archie about the savior visions," Snow argued.

"And according to Archie, who continues to violate doctor-patient confidentiality," Regina retorted, "she spent the entire session after rudely kicking Leroy out bitching and moaning about how if she died her Killypoo wouldn't get the happy ending he deserved. Maybe that pirate _did_ imprint on her curse. She clearly has self-worth prob-"

That conversation was put on hold when Hook suddenly came barreling into the yard and exclaimed, "You have to stop them! I thought it would be hot, seeing the two of them fight, but then the other Swan took my sword-"

Shattering glass brought everyone to their feet, Regina running ahead of everyone else to save her kitchen from total destruction. And, of course, the two blondes, but mostly her kitchen and the lasagna in the oven.

They found the place a complete wreck. One of the sisters had Hook's sword, using it to deflect the knives being magically hurled at her by the other, though Emma's aim wasn't very good anyway.

"IT'S MY CAR!"

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE STOLEN IT WITHOUT MY HELP!"

 _"You would have let the cops take Neal and driven to Canada yourself!"_ Emma accused. _"Just to waste all the money on rum and male prostitutes!"_

 _"But I wouldn't have gotten knocked up in the backseat! What a love story you've got! Knocked up by a deadbeat who's now literally dead!"_ (Not)Emma shot back.

Emma laughed derisively before mocking, _"What's your love story? Fetus Bride to Corpse Bride?"_

 _"You can hate on my wedding, but I made everyone so fucking happy I inspired them to burst into song!"_

 _"Pretty that was just to drown your voice! You sounded a shrill, dumbshit harpy! Somehow that was even worse than when you took the song in my heart and turned it onto sappy, crappy tripe!_ I WAS LITERALLY TRYING TO BREAK FREE, YOU BITCH!"

(Not)Emma rolled her eyes _. "Oh, world's smallest violin! You got nothing on me! I spent thirty fucking years trying! I earned my freedom! I fought to get out and start my life the moment I had a chance. I wasn't gonna sit around for two years waiting for Talla-fucking-hassee like a pathetic fool!"_

Emma's anger rose to the top again and she shouted angrily, "MAYBE NEAL WOULDN'T HAVE THOUGHT HE HAD NO PLACE IN MY HAPPY ENDING IF YOUR DOUCHEBAG RAPIST HUSBAND HADN'T HANDED HIM TO A CHILD ABUSING MONSTER TO TORTURE, OR AS HE RELATES IT TO MY SON: 'WE WERE BEST MATES AND BAELFIRE JUST WANTED TO STAY THERE TO AVOID HIS DAD' WHICH YOU KNOW IS COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT AND YOU DON'T EVEN CARE!"

(Not)Emma once more rolled her eyes. "Because Killian gave that kid a chance to stay and he chose being pissed about his mom over his safety, so that's his fault."

Emma glared. _"And you chose fucking the man who jabbed your own son's grandmother with his diseased cock over everyone else in your family, pirate whore!"_

 _"Not my son, criminal bitch with a middle school education!"_ (Not)Emma scoffed. "If I'd been in control, I'd have made something of our lives. You? You went back into the System because a strange teenager gave you a book and sold you a lying sack of shit rendition of a story so he wouldn't have to look after you. You went back to group homes and foster families where you were lucky if you didn't get starved and beaten, and still you stayed. For a story. For years, every time I tried to get you to run away, you went right back! If that's the 'hope' your parents put in your heart, I wouldn't want it. Cause all it did was make you gullible and broken so when I finally did get you to not look back, you threw your lot in with a man who left you and didn't even bother to see if the infamous compulsive liar he trusted with your safety kept his word. And after all the shit you went through being abandoned _you abandoned your own child_."

"BECAUSE OF YOU!" Emma shouted. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO SHOULD FEEL GUILTY! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ALL MY INSECURITIES THAT MADE ME GIVE UP MY SON BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T WANT HIM!"

"I SURE AS SHIT DIDN'T! BAD ENOUGH I HAD TO BARE WITNESS TO YOUR CHEAP MOTEL ROOM PORN CONCEPTION, BUT TAG ALONG FOR YOU BARING THAT LITTLE BRAT!?"

"STOP IT!" Snow interjected, her expression rather horrified at how quickly this had escalated. "You're sisters," she told them. "Act like it!"

"Sisters?" (Not)Emma scoffed at her mother. "She's just sad little orphan whose memories I have to endure of a childhood and a child that wasn't mine. And I'm just her evil carbon copy who freed myself from all her baggage and pathetic insecurities to find a happiness that she never could because your attempt to save your little Emma broke her instead. You think your song did anything for her? It was just a weapon for a battle, not some thirty year old security blanket. _I'm the thing that kept her alive and sane all that time_."

To Emma she stated coldly, "I didn't want Henry, but it's not on me that you were a scared, indecisive little fool who didn't believe she could be a mommy so she didn't even try. You can taunt me about not knowing what true love is, but you're the one who wasn't strong enough to bet on love being enough. You never have been. You didn't think you could be a mom. You didn't think you could save your lover. So you didn't even try. You just gave up. And I'm reaping the rewards. I got the man who went after you. I got the support and adoration of your son, forsaking his own happiness, turning it into mine, replacing his loser of a father with the man who was essentially taking over his life like your sad little romance never happened. It's not part of the story, Emma.

"But mine?" (Not)Emma laughed. "I got my story written down. Even went back and made myself part of Mom and Dad's story, made theirs better, like mine, not some sad little meet cute with a rock that literally no one else remembers now to go with your own ordinary romance that's nothing but a faded picture in a box with some mismatched jewelry that I was glad to have dark magic rid me of. But you're still clinging to the past, I see," she scoffed at Emma's broken glasses and the keychain around her neck, now hanging free of her top.

"Remnants of a dream that died because you weren't as strong as me," (Not)Emma smirked. "You think I fucked up your song? I'm the one who didn't have anything to live for either, _because I never got to live_ when I was stuck being part of you. Whatever song is in your heart, I'm glad it's not getting all mashed up with mine anymore. But you know what? I'm not even bitter. Because I got a happy beginning. Yours sucked. And your tragic ending was all on you.

"I've got the perfect marriage, the big house, the loving parents," she continued. "You lost all of them. So that stupid little charm and a spell may have kept my curse from killing you, but turns out living well really is the best revenge, isn't it? And don't forget I didn't just keep you from getting yourself killed as a kid because you were too meek to defend yourself, I took that sword for you.

"You'd be just another dead savior if not for me," (Not)Emma boasted. " _I_ saved _you._ All you did was not die because of a kiss. Like breaking the curse without even knowing what you were doing. And now you don't even have savior powers to pull miracles out of your ass. So what good are you? You're just that useless, no-talent girl who took her name from a greedy, whore-addicted guardian angel and somehow even knowing that, still draws pictures of swans like it's something to be proud of."

" _Stop it_ ," David cut in as Emma started sobbing, but it didn't matter, her sister was done anyway.

Regina stepped in and unhappily directed at the pony-tailed blonde, "I think perhaps you should leave."

"Aye," Hook uneasily agreed, pulling his wife by the arm while her sister slid down the cabinet to the floor, covering her face and her humiliation with her arms. "Come on, luv. You've said your peace. No need to kick your sister further when she's down."

"You're right," (Not)Emma agreed. "I have nothing more to say."

Exiting the kitchen, she completely ignored Henry who'd been standing with Regina before she stepped into the fray, and long enough to have heard the fight where it concerned him. He glanced sadly after the woman who'd not very attentively been raising him for the last couple of years, swallowing down a realization that she wasn't even like The Evil Queen who'd loved him in her own twisted, possessive way. His aunt really didn't care and never had. He was just some... baggage from a relationship she apparently had to endure thinking was hers when she had no emotional attachment to it or him.

Henry's shoes crunched on broken glass and he knelt down beside Emma. "You haven't lost me, Mom," he told her, pulling her into a hug and she continued to cry.

"I missed you," Emma gasped out, hugging him back tightly. She'd missed his hugs.

"I missed you too, Mom," Henry sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to keep you. Or to be here for you."

"You were here," Henry told her. "Maybe not in person, but when... when your sister cared, that was you, wasn't it? You were there, you just... you couldn't break completely free. That was your heart. Your song. You got your sister to do things your way, just for a bit. I'm sorry I didn't know," he said brokenly. "I'm sorry, when you were sad about giving me up that I didn't see you'd changed into someone who wasn't you. That... for a moment you were my mom. And I lost you again without even knowing it.

"I wanted you to be happy, even if you weren't happiest with me," Henry sniffed.

Emma returned sadly, "You really are your father's son, Kid."

"I do miss him, Mom," Henry said. "I pretend that I don't, but I do. Every time I get a good grade on a math test or help defeat some bad guy, I wonder... 'what would Dad think?' Cause I didn't know him long enough or enough about him to know. M...er... your sister never talked about him. Other than the song thing when she was the Dark One. I thought... maybe it was just too hard. Maybe you blamed yourself."

"I do," Emma sniffed. "My sister's right. She believed in true love when it counted. I didn't."

"You believed when you saved me and broke the Curse," Henry reminded. "You just... it was more complicated with Dad. And then it was your belief, realizing what you'd had, that your sister used for herself to fight for Hook, to believe she could have true love."

"I'm still sorry, Henry," Emma cried. "I should have tried to save him. For you. I should have believed for you. I got scared for myself and I didn't even think... he wanted you to know he was a good father and I still couldn't... like I couldn't find the faith in myself to keep you. I was alone then, but coming here... I knew true love was real and I had a family and I didn't fight for all of it. What kind of savior doesn't save her own true love?"

Fighting her own tears, Snow moved forward to help her up while stating, "One who didn't have parents growing up telling her how wonderful and strong and special she was. And that love can overcome anything, even the fear in our own hearts. I suppose we thought that song would be with you your whole life, making you know you weren't alone..."

"But the Blue Fairy only cared about the clutch moment," sighed David, "not that little girl who wanted to sing at a talent show."

Snow hugged her and David joined in.

"We're all sorry, Emma," Snow told her.

"And you haven't lost any of us," David added. "The things your sister said aren't true. There's nothing wrong with cherishing things that brought you happiness. Those things are part of your story."

"No one knows my story," Emma sniffled. "My sister's right. It's not in a book. All that not magical stuff in the not magical world. No one cares about that. It's not special or true love. No one around here writes stories or sings songs about two kids in a stolen car dreaming about moving to Florida."

"Just because no one has," Snow argued, "doesn't mean they can't."

0"That book's finished," Emma reminded. "You can't go back and put stories into it."

"But maybe I can fix what I got wrong in the next edition," said Henry. "There's a new book and you're part of that. I can put yours and Dad's story in the new book so it won't be forgotten. I don't care if the magic in it is only for the bad parts. I came out of the regular part. It's my story too and that makes it special. Because I'm The Author and I say so," he finished with a smile.

Emma sniffed and managed a small smile of her own. "Thanks, Kid."

"It matters to us too," David interjected. "I'm sorry if we made it seem that we didn't."

"We just... we just thought you didn't want to talk about the past," said Snow, "because it was painful, and focus on a new happy beginning. But we'd love to hear about your story with Neal, sweetheart," she encouraged. "We always did. It's your story, and we want to hear it more than anything. Whenever you're ready, okay?"

Emma nodded and sniffed again blotting her bloody nose with her broken glasses in one hand and her hair a mess, looking more like a child who'd gotten beaten up after school than a grown woman.

"Let's get you cleaned up, okay?" Snow finally said, guiding her toward the powder room. "Regina will fix your glasses... won't you?"

The other woman sighed. "And the rest of my kitchen that you destroyed, apparently." She waved a hand at the glasses, mending them instantly.

"Thanks," Emma told her. "My magic's a little..."

"Rusty. I noticed," Regina told her, amending, "I never took you for a hipster."

"I was living on the streets. I had to pick glasses out of thrift store bins," Emma defended. "And my sister threw out my contacts because she got her vision magically fixed."

"I like them," Snow told her. "They're very distinguished."

Emma gave her a look, trying to decide if she was lying or not, but emotions and her 'superpower' never mixed, so it was utter crap with her family. She just muttered a "thanks" and closed herself in the bathroom.

"So... that was... a thing that just happened," sighed David. "I thought last Thanksgiving was as bad as it could get."

"All of the stupid sibling fights of their missed shared childhood through puberty in under thirty minutes," Snow considered with a sigh.

The front door opened then, their other daughter returning with a grumbled, "Lost my keys."

"That's not all you lost, apparently," Regina snorted, walking into the foyer holding the set of keys dangling from Emma's star-shaped keychain.

As the blonde reached for them, Regina pulled them back. "Your sister's right. It's her car."

(Not)Emma glared. "Of everyone, I thought _you'd_ be on my side, Regina."

"I am on your side," Regina shot back. "And right now that side needs tough love when you just flipped out and assaulted your own sister. I know _not_ being 'evil' is the most difficult fight there is, and right now, between the two of you, _you_ are acting like the weak one making your sister cry and holding onto this car just to spite her. Are you even trying to fight it?"

(Not)Emma looked to her parents for support, but Snow stated, "You have a house and a husband with a ship of doubloons and your sister needs something familiar to start rebuilding her life from. You know that car was important to her for that once before. It's the only real home she had for her entire adult life until she came here. And it's the only place she has to feel close to Neal. She wasn't as lucky as you that way, honey. All she has is memories of true love. Please try to remember that. Emma's the one who had her life usurped here."

"Really? Cause I didn't get a life until I was thirty, Mom. I didn't even get _a name of my own_."

"Anna," David stated, surprising her. "That was the first name we considered."

"Well, our mothers names were the first," Snow corrected. "We ended up going with a similar 'E' name to honor my mother with the middle name 'Ruth'. So.. I think 'Anna Eva' would be appropriate. For someone who helped your father find his courage and someone who didn't start out as the kindest person but overcame her upbringing and her own nature to be one of the kindest, most beloved queens in all the kingdoms."

David told her, "I know you're angry. Angry that your sister blames you for things beyond your control, that you didn't know affected her life. Angry that you went from carrying Emma's savior burden as a price of finally living to now having this new one with your freedom. But you can overcome those impulses, curse-driven or not."

"You just have to stop thinking of your sister as the enemy to your happiness," Snow encouraged. "I think you're both wrong about that song. You were each part of each other. That song was supposed to be a duet. Different parts in both of your hearts. You helped each other. And you hurt each other too. But focus on the helping.

(Not)Emma sighed and held up her hands. "Fine. Give Emma the damn car. The engine needs to be overhauled and I think something died in the heating vents, anyway."

She turned back toward the door to leave, but Henry was there demanding, "You really gave me up just because you didn't want to bother being my mom?"

"No," she directed at Henry, "I never wanted to be your mother. You weren't my kid. You're part of my sister's story that I'd have 'edited out' well before enduring eight months of bloated misery and the horrors of childbirth if I'd had more influence on Emma than I did."

Snow took her daughter rather forcefully by the arm. "I don't care if Henry isn't your child. You don't say things like that!"

(Not)Emma shot back. "I'm evil, remember?"

Snow glared. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare define yourself by some stupid curse! I taught you better than that! You don't need your sister's goodness in you to find your own. You just need to actually fight it!"

"Maybe I don't want to," (Not)Emma told her before pushing past Henry and Hook who'd ended up loitering in the doorway.

The pirate sighed. "She doesn't mean that. She's just... finding her bearings. I suppose when she was the Dark One she had her sister's light to help stay... focused. It's just a lot for her to take in, that she's not the person she thought she was."

"We understand that," sighed David. "Believe me. We all had to go through that kind of revelation. I just wish she'd talk to us."

Regina addressed Henry, "Don't pay what she said any mind."

"It's fine," he grimaced. "She didn't get to live anything but my mom's life for most of hers. She didn't get to have a first love without all of Mom's baggage. Plus being cursed to hate my mom and want to destroy her happiness. I'm part of that. It makes sense.

" _Him_ on the other hand," Henry scowled at Hook.

He directed at his not-anymore-step-father, "I honestly thought you were friends with my dad, that he looked up to you. How could you do that to him? And then... just go after my mom like that wasn't gross and wrong?"

"I was a different man," Hook repeated. "And sometimes lies are kinder, lad. I was never a terribly moral man, I suppose. Prone to disobeying orders. A few years in the navy couldn't quite get the merchant sailor out of me that was a budding pirate who'd just had my path put a bit on hold by my brother. I've never pretended I'd not had many a man's wife, and your father had no claim on your mother. I made it clear to him that while I'd give him a go to win her heart back, I was in it for the long haul."

"My mom's not a prize in a contest," Henry retorted. "And you obviously didn't win it anyway."

"Aye, perhaps not," Hook conceded. "I earned the love of a woman I didn't even know I wanted... who was pursuing me as well, fancied me equally enough to fight her way into being her own person. Any disappointment at failing in my seduction of Miss Swan is far eclipsed by having gained the lovely Mrs. Jones... whom I'd best head after. She made me a better person. Seems it's my turn to be the inspiration in this relationship."

After he'd left Regina snorted derisively under her breath, "And pigs will fly out of my ass."

"Regina!" Snow sussed.

"I always felt kinda bad that I jinxed their wedding rings," Henry snorted. "Not anymore."

"You... _Henry_!" David scolded while Regina sniggered.

"Well, if it was going to be 'Operation Best Man'," Henry shrugged, "it had to involve actually doing something more than keeping the rings safe. Just didn't bother telling Hook that I kept them safe over night in a bottle of infertility potion that I got Aunt Zelena to brew up for me. Hence her getting a kick out of 'hugging it out' at the wedding. She's definitely not over the accelerated-pregnancy-to-use-her-kid-as-vessel-for-immortal-ancient-evil thing. That and she said it would be a crime against humanity if they procreated."

"Said the Evil Twin with her own evil brat," snorted Emma, who'd emerged from the bathroom looking a bit less of a mess. Regina handed her the Bug's keys which Emma took with a questioning look.

"Better claim it before her guilt-forced generosity wears off."

Emma took the keys without thanks and after a glance at her son and her parents hurried out the front door, heading for the car parked at the curb.

Henry looked conflicted but Regina surmised, "I think she needs some time to herself. Better she gets her emotions in check than starts blowing up lamp posts... or mailboxes."

Hook and her sister were still on the sidewalk. Some words were exchanged along with crude gestures. Emma got in the car and pulled away from the curb, but not fast enough to avoid the rum flask her sister pulled from Hook's jacket and threw at the hood, bending the radio antenna. She didn't seem very concerned for her husband's distress over any damage done to his flask either.

"On the bright side," Snow considered, "since both of our daughters clearly want some alone time, do you think we could get Granny to baby-sit for another hour and take a break from this?"

"Ugh, spare me _your_ sex plans," groaned Regina and she magically shoved them out onto the front stoop. "Next time, your place," she concluded before the door slammed in their faces.

"MOM!" Henry suddenly called out from the kitchen just before the smoke alarm started to go off.

"Shit, the lasagna!" Regina groaned, adding as she rushed into the kitchen, "Stupid Charmings!"

* * *

AN: Sadly, on the show, Henry seems disgustingly onboard with CraptainSwine. But then, he _is_ Rumple's grandson and that guy sure is smooth at seeming genuine about stuff while stabbing people in the back. Of course, that would never happen on the show. Everyone licks Hook's cock. But I wish it were so...

Next up: Grief interrupted.


	5. We All Fall Down

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

WE ALL FALL DOWN

The cemetery was super creepy at night. Emma had never gotten used to it, not even during daylight really, as it seemed every time she'd visited it was raining or just plain gloomy outside, adding to the eerie and depressing state of the neglected grave.

Tonight, feeling like she'd just lost an MMA fight, Emma parked the Bug in the gravel lot and tampered down her paranoia before getting out - and leaving the windows down in an attempted to air out the stench of rum and her sister's perfume that itself barely masked pirate B.O... which was maybe why she wore the stuff, to deaden her sense of smell.

Emma frowned at the useless pine tree air freshener she'd picked up on the way and realized she would have to get the Interior professionally cleaned... even though she basically had no money and no job now. Could she sue her sister for her savings and salary prior to their switch? Could she get some kind of compensation or sibling equivalent of alimony as restitution? It didn't seem like the other woman would just kindly had it over. She clearly wasn't happy about returning the car, probably only because their parents had convinced her to do it.

 _"Gonna go_ _ **home**_ _now? Oh wait, you don't have one."_

That had hurt. The doubling meaning, the dig at her dream of Tallahassee, was clearly intended. Thanks to her sister sharing all of her memories, she knew just the right things to say to hurt her.

Emma wiped her eyes beneath her repaired glasses and shut the car door that squeaked in a way it hadn't for years. And the engine did need overhauling. Her sister didn't even take care of the car she was angry over giving up. She just liked that keeping it hurt Emma.

"Fuck her," Emma growled into the darkness, pulling her now torn and stained jacket around her.

She'd been destitute before, of course - most of her life in fact - so it wasn't that Emma cared so much about the money, though she had taken pride in her job as Sheriff and it had felt good to make a legit living; being a bounty hunter, an occupation illegal in a lot of states, was really just barely the right side of the law. Being the real good guy with the badge had felt like she was finally, weirdly, in the most unexpected way discovering who she was meant to be but never believed she could. Of course, it had helped that it made Henry proud of her.

At least she still had her son, though Henry had grown up quite a bit, and he'd been influenced by individuals, relationships, and events without the kind of guidance, the kind of parenting, Emma thought he should have had. Whatever his scheming, he _had_ softened his views on things and people that Emma found upsetting. He'd accepted Hook and Zelena as family. He'd rejected his grandfather and uncle, following the lead of her sister and their parents. None of it made sense to Emma. The amount of hypocrisy and injustice that seemed to have proliferated since her sister's return from the past made her feel ill.

Even though she had her family back, Emma felt more alone than she had in a very long time. They didn't really feel like her family anymore. They were her sister's family. And maybe in an actual literal way that was true based on the hypothesis about the time travel and Emma having memories of the original timeline while her sister had memories of the altered one. Life hadn't just gone on and she wasn't really a part of it, it had fundamentally changed. Her family hadn't just grown closer, they were different people. Maybe different in small ways, but those ways had added up. Or maybe... maybe it didn't matter and even if no time travel had been involved at all Emma had judged her family wrong and they'd still have forgotten the person she was in favor of the person they thought she'd become.

The one person she thought could maybe understand, that she wanted to talk to more than anyone wasn't here, and it was too late to change that.

Sucking in a breath of dewy air, Emma finally reached Neal's woefully neglected yet still too new and shiny looking headstone with its pathetically simple epitaph that even his father - that irked her - hadn't fixed.

Putting her jacket down on the damp grass and shivering a little, Emma sat and had to take a few deep breaths to keep from breaking down.

"I'm sorry I haven't been to visit," she began. "I don't know if you can hear me, though you found me once... even if it turns out you also found my sister who didn't like me getting a word in, having a happy moment. Seems I could get some control in the dream world, at least for awhile. But it never stuck back in this one.

"I don't know if being dead you knew about that, though you would have said something, wouldn't you? It sucks that incorporeal soul vision kisses can't break curses, if that's even what we were. But either way, I'm sorry no one could save you when I was me _or_ her.

"Also, I'm sorry you had to stay at Granny's. Even staying with my parents and walking in on them having sex is better than that dump. Even knowing about my sister's sex life is better than that dump," she grimaced. "I wish we'd been able to get that coffee, though..."

Emma pulled at some weeds that had grown up, hating that no one had cared to maintain Neal's grave - not that her family had probably tended to any others. The dandelions had all gone to seed and were withering with the approach of winter.

Her family had turned out to be the same sort of selfish pricks you'd find in any family, which maybe should have been reassuring, that they were normal people, but she'd hoped for more when she found out this magic and fairy tales stuff was all real, not to have the curtain pulled back and realize they were just extraordinary assholes.

"I wish you'd gotten to know Henry more... that he'd had more time with you. To... to miss you as more than just a concept," Emma continued while pulling the seeds off a wilting dandelion. "I know he could use your advice. He's growing up and I missed being a proactive part of that too. My sister, she just barely gave a fuck about him, so his only male role models have been Hook and my dad who've basically taught him how to cheat at cards and that inside every girl is a damsel in distress who needs a handsome and heroic man to break down their walls and bring out their feminine side. So I guess it's no wonder Henry's girlfriend is an indoctrinated little noblewoman from Camelot instead of a girl with actual aspirations and brains."

Emma threw her mangled handful of weeds down in a huff and growled, "I might have been a mess after prison, but I could have taught him better than that! And the worst part? I only gave Henry up because of _her_. I was scared that I wasn't qualified to be a mother, didn't know how, and she made me think that meant I couldn't be one, didn't _want_ to be one. That's all she's ever done is make me doubt love."

She sniffed and lamented, "I should have chosen you. I should have tried true love's kiss to save you. I should have been strong enough to fight those fears, those doubts. I should have been able to push back against her creepy obsession with Hook, keep my mind and heart clear. But I wasn't strong enough. She's right. I was a coward. I was weak. And now you're gone and I didn't even keep my promise to be there for Henry. And that's _her_ fault."

Sniffling, Emma continued, "You probably think that's selfish. I know you'd want me to try and see her side of things, of never getting to be in control, never having her own life, having to share all of her memories with me. And I guess that's true. I mean, she deserves to have her own life, but I didn't deserve to be punished so she could have it. And neither did you. We were supposed to have Tallahassee, Neal, not... whatever _this_ is.

"I guess I should at least be glad she stopped wearing this," Emma clutched the keychain, "before shagging her syphilitic boytoy. At least she didn't completely ruin our memories, even if it's just a dream now that'll never happen, cause there is no Tallahassee without you, Neal," she sniffed. "That's what I would have told you when you said you'd always love me, if I'd been able to get it out. I just hope you know I _would_ have gone to The Underworld for you if you'd been there, if I'd known about it when I still had the chance to right my wrong of not trying to save you in the woods that day. I'll always regret that. But I guess that's the tragedy of us, huh? Neither of us believed enough in true love when it mattered the most. I just hope you really are ha-"

A creaking sound startled Emma out of her one-sided conversation and she jumped to her feet. Squinting into the darkness - it was a nearly new moon and a cloudy night - she spotted a shadow emerging from Regina's crypt that obviously wasn't Regina.

Emma took off after the cloaked figure. She reached for her gun - that she didn't have - then tried to focus to throw magic at the person, but the stream of silvery tendrils sputtered badly and went wide, striking a tree instead, which just alerted the person that she was in pursuit.

Suddenly, another person came barreling into the scene at a perpendicular trajectory off a jogging track and called out, "STOP! SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT!"

It was her sister who then fired _her_ weapon, but the trespasser dodged it easily, then threw something glowing in their direction that exploded-

And in the next instant they were both swinging perilously on the rickety bridge across Storybrooke's gorge.

"Oh, great!" (Not)Emma groaned as her gun tumbled down into the abyss as she grabbed for the ropes. "Well, poof us out of here!"

"I can't!" Emma hissed. "I've been trying magic all day and throwing knives at you and missing as badly as you missed that creep with _my_ gun was the best I've got! I haven't actually done any magic myself since Regina had me practicing vanishing cups of hot chocolate, and I'm pretty sure succeeding at that was mostly you showing off for Hook! So now I can't even fix the damn ropes!"

"Oh, please! You've just got some kinda mental block because you don't want to accept any responsibility for any of my actions using _your_ magic!"

"Why should I? They weren't mine!"

"Some of them were! The good ones! Mom and Dad are right that Hook wouldn't be here if you hadn't helped me let him go," admitted (Not)Emma.

"How is Hook begin alive a good thing?" Emma scoffed in return. "My true love is dead because you're obsession with that pirate made me give into my fears that we couldn't have a second chance never mind _you_ not even trying to save him after screwing up our parents' story, and then getting to bring that asshole back from death a dozen different times like the fucking selfish hypocrite you are! You got a happy ending or beginning or whatever you want to call it with a total creep and Neal died so you could! And now everyone praises you even though you're a selfish bitch and somehow I'm the loser who didn't fight for love! It's not fair!"

(Not)Emma groaned. "I know it's not! You think it's fair that I was just a voice in your fucking head for thirty years? That I don't have a childhood of my own, even if it would have been shitty? That I have to share your memories of some loser car thief and giving birth to his kid in prison?"

"Right, because that's so much worse than to share your true love with a diseased rapist!" Emma hissed back. "I'd rather plummet to my death!"

"Then why don't you? You think I like having to remember giving birth to _your_ kid and your feeling guilty about it? That's not my life!"

The ropes began to unravel and one side listed badly sending them tumbling into each other and hanging off the bridge.

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, TRY SOMETHING!" (Not)Emma shouted.

"I AM!" Emma glared at her sister. "I HAVE PLENTY OF EMOTION RIGHT NOW AND IT'S NOT WORKING!"

(Not)Emma glared back, then had an epiphany. "YOU'RE TRYING ANGER! THAT'S _MY_ THING! USE YOUR SAPPY SMILEY LOVE SHIT!"

Emma blinked. It was true. She had been focusing on her anger. It had worked in Neverland. Well, that was maybe more frustration and exasperation with Hook and Neal and - maybe it really was her desperation to save Henry, her love for him that-

The last of the tethers gave way just as purple cloud enveloped them and returned them to the spot in the forest they'd been minutes ago just as Hook run onto the scene clutching a bloody gash on his forehead.

"Oh, luv!" he gasped, pulling her into an overly long hug. "I was so worried! That lunatic said you were dead!"

"Well, I'm not," she sighed, pulling away. "Thanks to... ah... Emma's magic."

"You helped me get it to work, though," Emma grudgingly admitted. "I should have known better that your method wouldn't work for me."

"Oh, wonderful, you've made up," Hook remarked cheerfully, "so might we get back to the station before I bleed out all over my own grave?"

* * *

The sisters might have reached a cease fire, but that didn't mean things were good between them. It only took a half an hour of watching her sister fawn over Hook, tending to his cut forehead while the pirate fondled her breasts through her floral print dress, before Emma was ready to both punch the wall and throw up.

"I'm calling it a night," she declared, grabbing her still-damp jacket and the rest of the crap cup of coffee from the machine no one had ever fixed.

"But we still have to canvas the area for that wanker who tried to kill us," Hook insisted.

"So call my father and you can bro around while making out with my sister," Emma griped. "If you're both fine wasting my time flirting with each other then you have to be fine with my deciding not to give a shit about this police investigation. I've basically been in prison since you fell down that portal, so the last thing I want to do is hang out at a police station."

Emma made it to the parking lot before her sister caught up, arguing "Come on, don't be like that. This is a serious case."

"Yeah, and I'm the actual Sheriff," Emma shot back, "who should be calling the shots here. But you've got my badge and my gun, you filled _my office_ with all your shitty little 'true love' momentoes and I'd have to disinfect the entire building, anyway, not to mention the squad car _and my car_ , to clean up all the bodily fluid stains you two skanks have left all over the place. So consider this one last freebie investigation I'm giving you before you get to find a new occupation! I may not have a home, but I have integrity. And a job I was _elected_ to serve, unlike you and Deputy Dipshit over there!"

(Not)Emma scoffed at her. "Wow. You know what? Fine. Leave. I actually tried to open up and admit I'm not perfect and all you want to do is keep tearing me down. I'm sorry I'm not magic's gift to law enforcement like you, but don't pretend you actually could have been a bounty hunter _or_ had what it took to run for Sheriff to spite Regina _without my spite_. You needed my darkness to give you that ambition. That nerve. And you need it to do this job, so right now, you're wholly unqualified, sis."

"Not perfect?" Emma scoffed. "You're a disgrace to this office. Graham would be disgusted with what you've done. And you think I need your darkness? Not nearly as much as you need my light to not be a complete condescending bitch. So good luck with that. It was my goodness that attracted your pathetic husband so he could snuff it out. Then he decided he liked basking in the glow. Well, that's gone now, so have fun working that shit out. He's already got one narcissistic asshole looking at him in the mirror. Not sure what he'd need another one for unless it's just the fucking and pancakes."

"At least I've got someone to fuck!"

Emma just got in the Bug and peeled out of the lot.

"Another fight, eh?" Hook deduced when a disgruntled-looking blonde stormed back in.

"She said I'm a disgrace as Sheriff," huffed (Not)Emma.

Shrugging, Hook replied, "And?"

"Seriously? You agree with her?" she squawked.

Hook shrugged again and answered, "Why do you think I love working here? Besides getting to have you whenever I want? I always knew there was a bad girl inside you, Swan-"

"I told you, I'm not a 'Swan' anymore. Never was. Emma picked that name. That's not mine either. I don't know who the fuck I am!" she complained, her own distress finally cracking through the cruelty that her sister drew to the surface. "She's right, I'm just a nameless stowaway with some hereditary asshole disease."

"You're my nameless stowaway with some hereditary asshole disease," Hook told her with a smile.

She harumphed. "You went after my sister for her light, didn't you? You even said that once. First to destroy it, because it burned, it reminded of you of being good, but then you wanted it, wanted it to make you good again. That my light was like the stars to navigate your way home. But it was never mine. So what does that make me?"

"It makes you my wife," Hook insisted. "And my home. Aye, I fancied that light. I hated it. I was enchanted by it. Perhaps I've flattered myself by sharing it. But I loved you even when you were the Dark One."

"Accept when _you were also the Dark One_..."

"Well, that was a rather complicated situation," he grimaced. "But I love you. No matter what you call yourself you'll always be Mrs. Jones to me. Your sister, seems she never warmed to my charms. Never believed I could be better. You could. You did. And you made me better. Perhaps because you want the same even if you didn't rightly know it. To be more than that darkness.

"And I don't think you heart's all black," Hook continued. "If your sister hates me so, that love has to be all your own. Perhaps she protected a bit of your heart, kept that curse from taking over completely. So I suppose we do owe her that. Aye, you saved her life in a literal sense, perhaps, sparing her what would have been her fate against the Black Fairy's game, but you did that because Emma allowed you to still care, to want to save more than yourself. I refuse to believe that was all Emma making that sacrifice. You were in control. So part of you wanted the same thing she did. To save everyone - not just me."

Shaking his head, Hook insisted, "Your curse'll tell you otherwise, like having the Dark Ones in your head whispering things that aren't true, trying to make you hate those you love, make them hate you for hurting them. But don't listen to it, luv. They're your family. And if they'll accept me after the things I did - and Regina besides - a little blood curse won't keep them from loving you any less than your sister.

"As for me? All my love is for you. This doesn't change that. Just... makes things a bit complicated. But when's that been a problem for us, luv?"

(Not)Emma considered, "That is true. We always come out on top."

Hook wagged a brow. "Speaking of on top..."

"Nu-uh! It my turn, pirate!" (Not)Emma retired and rewarded her husband with a kiss.

* * *

Regina had only just finished cleaning up - doing it without magic was a way to burn off anger slowly enough that she didn't need an extra therapy session - when the doorbell rang. She swore under her breath and pulled open the door to face Emma Swan. Again.

Eyes narrowing, she asked, "Please tell me that you're not the evil one in disguise?"

Squinting a little, Emma replied, "I kind of lost my glasses in the gorge after that creepy alchemist poofed me there and-"

"That explains the spectacular parking job then," Regina muttered of her ruined rose bush and magicked them back onto the blonde's face. Of course, they were broken again and she had to wiggle her fingers to repair the shattered lenses. "Perhaps you should go back to contacts. Or have your vision repaired. Magic can only mend these so many times."

"Um... yeah, probably. Thanks... again."

"What do you want other than to inform me of this alchemist attacking again? To which, I'm sure someone had a cell phone you could have borrowed to call if your sister is too busy getting banged in the ass by her pirate and your father too busy enduring the missionary position with your mother."

"Actually, I'm here for Henry," Emma stated. "But thanks for two disturbing images to haunt my dreams tonight. We're going on a roadtrip."

"At one in the morning?"

"I need to get out of here for awhile," Emma explained. "It feels like my life has been taken over and destroyed. Everyone just... went on without me, with this impostor version of me, and I know she wasn't intentionally trying to fool anyone, but she's the 'Emma Swan' everyone knows now. Or Mrs. Stepford Jones. Or whatever. She's the Emma that _Henry_ knows even if she was never really his mother. I just... I want to feel like I'm his mom again. I can't do that here when all I've got is all this... confusion and anger over what was taken from me. You get that, don't you?"

Regina sighed, because she did get that. She liked to think that she might not have devolved into the Evil Queen if she hadn't been trapped in the castle with her mother, Snow White, an unloving husband, and Rumplestiltskin visiting unannounced to offer her vengeance with darkness. It had taken coming to this world to even begin escaping that person she'd turned herself into with all of her anger and hatred. Henry had been the only thing that could break through that facade, bring out what goodness she still had left with her need to protect him, to be his mother. It was often tainted by selfish motives, of course, but in the end the better emotions of that maternal condition had won out.

"To where is this road trip?" asked Regina and Emma shrugged.

"New York. Well, maybe Boston first. I have a safe deposit box there with some money in. And I should make sure I... or my sister... or both of us," she rubbed her temples, "got the last of my stuff while memory-cursed from my apartment there. Maybe I'll see if I can get out of the lease by signing something with that pen of Henry's. Then same in New York. Plus Neal's. Henry should remember Neal as more than just a kid who fell down a portal and then died a man who was a stranger to almost everyone."

Brow lifting, Regina inquired, "This is just for Henry, is it?"

Shrugging, again Emma admitted, "I was in his apartment twice after he died, but not really. I guess I want to know that his life wasn't so bad, that he did have some happiness in it. I don't want his life to have been completely miserable, centuries of suffering for trying to do the right thing for other people."

"You might not like what you find."

"I know. The answers might suck worse than not knowing," Emma conceded. "But I have to know to get past this, to not be completely miserable and never be able to forgive my sister for being happy. And Henry should know about his father's life. Our stories aren't exactly a fairytale, but it's where he came from and everyone deserves to know that."

"I suppose I can't dispute that," Regina agreed, "though I might switch 'happy' for 'oblivious slut'."

"You're friends."

"I'm a recovering mass murderer," sighed Regina. "Your sister appeals to my... darker inclinations and habits that someone declared so pure wasn't as perfect as her insufferable parents. It appeals to my desire to find my better self that I'd lost so long ago that she had forgiveness - and friendship for someone who'd gone so far astray as I had. Maybe that was your compassion, I don't know. I can't say that we ever had time ourselves to become more than allies trying to save our son."

"I suppose not," Emma agreed. "And even then, I guess I did have my sister's anger and violent streak to contend with, sometimes not so well."

"My kitchen would contest that it's not all your sister's."

Emma winced. "I'm sorry about that. She really did provoke me and I can't seem to control my magic that well anymore. I guess it was used to that darkness or something."

"Magic does come more easily with darkness," Regina nodded. "I wanted to get rid of mine and that didn't go so well for either of us. I suppose I should have considered how well it went for you, your parents' casting that spell, even before knowing about this whole Evil Twin thing. You can't upset the natural balance without consequences. We all just have to deal with the things we've done and who they've made us into."

"I'm not sure I even know who that is now," sighed Emma. "It's sort of like the fake memories you gave me and that year in New York. I've got all my sister's memories, her experiences, but those weren't my choices, that wasn't my life. In fact, my life seems to exist in a world that doesn't anymore, with memories of things here that didn't actually happen. Everyone's... different. Makes it hard to feel like I belong. Plus, it's weirdly quiet in my head and that's making me a bit crazy."

"I can't imagine going through life thinking a voice in your head was normal," Regina retorted.

"Moms?" Henry announced himself on the stairs. "What's going on?"

"We're taking a roadtrip," Emma informed. "Pack some stuff."

"Now? Where?" Henry asked, confused.

Regina answered. "Boston and New York, apparently. Emma wants to visit some banks and your old apartments."

"Oh, yeah," Henry nodded, "I always meant to ask about that. Weird that the curse won't let you get rid of them."

"Well, it pays the rent, so it's not terrible," Emma shrugged. "But considering my sister blew all my savings on her house and ugly fashion week clothes and now has abysmal credit in my name, I figured I'd clear out the bearer bonds I got from some clients. Then finish up at your dad's place. I'm sure there's some stuff there you should have. Unless you don't want to come?" she amended, a bit uncertain. "I just thought... we haven't had any actual time together for years without curses or memory charms, and-"

"No, it's cool," Henry nodded. "I mean, if it's okay...?" he glanced at his adoptive mom.

"Probably safer with a lunatic on the lose anyway. That Alchemist was causing trouble again tonight, apparently," sighed Regina. "If we all get sucked down a portal, you can penny wish us back or something. Go pack."

"Ah... okay. Can we stop at... um... my aunt's to pick up a few things?"

"Sure," Emma answered, though she grimaced. "We should probably also pick up a trailer since renting one'll be... difficult."

Henry glanced between his mothers once more and hurried back upstairs.

"If you do," Emma stated, "I might 'accidentally' make sure your sister is left behind along with mine. My twin might not care that Zelena murdered my kid's father, and you might not mind that lunatic being around Henry so you can have your sisterly whatever, but she's not my family, and if she gets anywhere near Henry, I will cut the bitch."

"Threatening to stab my sister is hardly ingratiating yourself here," Regina retorted.

"I'm not my sister looking to be gal-pals who enable each other's shitty selfish decisions without holding anyone accountable for their actions, especially when those actions are cold-blooded murder and premeditated rape," Emma shot back. "I'm a mother trying to do what's in the best interest of my kid and that's not being around your sister

After a pause, Emma amended, "Your past crimes aren't so different from hers and you never even served a day in that asylum, don't forget. The rest of my family seems to have forgotten that, but I haven't. I wouldn't have agreed with some selfish quick-fix of pulling out your dark side instead of owning up to all the shit you used it to get away with, taking accountability for the mass murdering, for what you did to Graham, for what you did to me and my parents and gas lighting Henry to try and keep your cursed little paradise. And then just shrugging it off that your darkness created a world even more counterfeit than this one that exists now with a version of Henry that you orphaned before you decided it was real enough to send a part of you that didn't want to completely take back into yourself packing there. Sending the 'Evil Queen' to go be with a some... simulated version of Robin in a world where your simulated son wants to kill her isn't heroic. I was two people. You weren't. That was part of yourself that you got tired of owning up to. I guess the question is, if a fake person kills some created from part of a real person in a fake world, does that part just cease to exist? Either way it seems cowardly and cruel, Regina."

Regina frowned deeply but didn't contest the claim. "Perhaps it was. It's a choice I made at the time. Like you chose to separate your lover from Gold before figuring out how to save him. Like you chose to revive Hook instead of letting him die and retaining our magic. And thus your self. Both were, perhaps, foolish and costly in hindsight, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn't it? Or clearer, anyway."

"I suppose it is," Emma agreed as Henry came back downstairs.

She smiled at him. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah. Can I drive?"

"No," both Emma and Regina said at once.

Henry groaned in dismay and endured his adoptive mother's hug.

"Be good," Regina told him. "Keep your mother out of trouble."

"You know I can't promise that, Mom!" Henry exclaimed.

"It was worth a shot."

He rolled his eyes and headed down the front walk with his bag. The pleasant smiles faded away quickly then and Emma told the former Evil Queen, "I don't want us to be enemies, Regina. But I will fight for my son to grow up right, to not compromise stuff like ethics and justice just because there are bad apples in this family. My sister's violent tendencies or not, I will cut off whatever branches of this family tree threaten Henry's well-being."

That said, Emma concluded brusquely, "I'll do my best to keep Henry out of trouble."

"No promises, I know," Regina grimaced and amended, "Emma... I will talk to my sister."

Emma nodded back, the best answer she supposed she could get at this time of night, and went to join Henry at the curb.

"Did you run over the roses again?" he asked as they put his bags in the bonnet.

"That was one time I lost my contacts and the sun was in my eyes," Emma grumbled, remembering that winter, during the unofficial restraining order period and that Regina was thankfully not at home when she drove by to walkie-talkie talk with Henry.

"At least you didn't hit the mailbox this time."

"Yeah, well, at least I didn't hit a dozen mailboxes including an post office one that's like a federal offense or anything. Plus, you know, driving at the age of twelve."

"Hey," Henry defended, "there are states were you can get a permit at fourteen."

"Well, none of them are where we're going."

"Do you even have a license? Doesn't your sister have it?"

"Stole it while she was making out with Hook," replied Emma, opening the driver's door. "She never changed her name on it to 'Jones' so we're cool."

Henry slumped in his seat and asked, "So... you and your sister had a fight, huh?"

Emma blinked. "What? No."

"You're a terrible liar, Mom. That was obviously your sister's thing."

She sighed. "Fine, we had a fight. She tried to admit she'd messed some stuff up, but I was too angry to talk about it and I kind of ruined things., but then she didn't make it any better with some of the things she said. We ended up fighting about who's Sheriff," she explained, "and I just need to clear my head... or strategies... I don't know exactly. I just know that I don't know where I fit in Storybrooke - or this family - anymore, but I don't want to keep getting defensive about it. I want to figure out how to get my life and my family back too."

"You're my mom," Henry stated. "And you're Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter. You don't fit any differently than you did before."

"I don't know about that, Kid," Emma told him. "I don't think I quite found out where I fit before my idiot sister decided to run toward a time portal without any magic to close it. Things were different when she got back. She changed reality and that changed the people in it. Stories or chapters in stories happened that didn't before, not in the life I remember. So I don't quite fit, Kid. But I can't get that universe back. It's gone. All I can do is figure out how to be part of this one."

Emma pulled up in front of her sister's house. "One thing I do know is it won't include living in a monstrosity like this one."

"It's ugly," shrugged Henry, "but it's got fast wifi and no parental controls."

Emma snorted at that, watching her son hurrying to get his things. That was true. And if that was the only reason Henry was so fond of loitering around her sister's house rather than Regina's or her parents... well... for a teenager who didn't seem to have friends she could understand that.

They really had to address the matter of Henry not having friends...

Her son returned with another dufflebag and put it in the trunk before getting back in the passenger seat with plastic grocery bag in his hand.

"There wasn't anything nice to wrap it in," he said, handing it over and amending, "It's not... in the best shape..."

Uncertain, Emma reached into the bag and pulled out... Neal's old dreamcatcher. It was bent and singed. Her sister had used it as a focal point when casting her spell on the dreamcatchers she made and never again thought about it.

"I found it in the trash when... Killian was throwing out all of them from the shed. I figured he didn't mean to throw it out..."

"Oh, I'm sure he did," Emma countered after swallowing thickly. "My stupid sister showed it to him so he knew what it looked like, nothing like the handmade ones. She told him your dad gave it to me a long time ago. Which isn't true. I found it in the motel room where we decided to go to Tallahassee and I gave it to your dad."

"And he kept it in his window because it's fly paper for nightmares," nodded Henry. "Yeah. Dad told me. It obviously meant something to you when you found it, so I asked him. I thought maybe I could fix it. I figured you felt really bad about using it the way you had, but if I could repair it, then maybe it'd be a good memory again. I couldn't, though. Mom said all the good magic had been sucked out of it and it was broken for good, like the ring Daniel gave her."

"I guess it is," Emma agreed, sadly fingering the frayed twine and she wiped at tears at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Henry groaned. "I wasn't trying to make you upset. I just overheard Mom and Grandma talking on the phone earlier about how your sister threw out most of your stuff..."

"It's okay, Henry," Emma assured him. "I'm glad you kept it. It might not have magically trapped memories, but it still has regular ones. And they were good. The happy _beginning_ that almost was. You getting to meet your dad."

"And sad ones too," he sighed.

"Yeah, and sad ones. It feels like we got more sad than happy ones," Emma lamented, "though I know that's not true. Your dad and I had a lot of happy memories. They're not written down in any magical book, but they're our story, so they're part of your story. And you should know them. I'm sorry you've had to go this long without that. I'm sorry I waited so long to tell you anything... and then I wasn't there to tell you the rest."

"It's okay," Henry shrugged. "You're here now. And it's a long drive to New York."

"That's true," Emma agreed, sniffling and set the dreamcatcher on the dash. "We should pick up that trailer."

"My plants are probably all dead," he joked and amended, "What was up with that anyway? I hate gardening."

"Probably not as much as I do," Emma snorted. "So your mom probably figured she'd foist her hobby on you."

They stopped off at Marine Garage where Tamara's old trailer, painted over and now rented out by Michael Tillman sat in the back with a few rental cars and trucks. Emma paid the night attendant, a pimply kid with 'Jack' on his nametag who was more interested in his phone than verifying that she was actually Emma S. Jones. Yeah, she'd stolen one of her sister's credit cards, but she had enough that she'd hardly miss it.

With the trailer hitched and a full tank of gas the approached the town line, only the headlights illuminating the road ahead.

"I really can't even drive until we get to that lobster shack?" Henry tried again.

"You can be the navigator."

"That's easy," Henry chuffed, taking out his phone and asking for directions to Boston. The phone responded, _No cell signal. No off-line map available_.

"Damn it!"

Emma handed him a map and a flashlight. "These old farm roads are a bitch."

* * *

Next up: One sister takes a roadtrip to fix herself while the other tries to right a wrong.


	6. Uninvited

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER SIX

UNINVITED

The day was cool, spotty rain showers pelting the Bug's windshield. After stopping for breakfast they'd popped into Emma's old apartment where she'd found some boxes of clothes under the bed that the movers overlooked and Henry threw out the science experiment bottle of juice he'd drank out of when he was ten while the glittering skyline of Boston slowly gave way to morning.

Unable to contact the building owner or manager, Emma had given up on dealing with the lease and they'd taken care of her banking business before continuing south for another four hours of driving.

In the passenger seat, Henry tried for the thousandth time to get comfortable, his long legs no longer really fitting in the small car, not sure if the relief at a break from his crazy family would outweigh the cramps and stiff muscles he'd have for days after the awkwardness of his mother's apartment... and wondering if he was the reason the apartment remained hers, paid for by magic. It was where he found her, his mother, the savior, the hope for his family to be reunited. This time he'd taken pictures with phone intending to find a way to magically transfer them to the book to tell his mom's story.

As Emma changed lanes for the off ramp, he yawned and asked, "Pit stop?"

"Not exactly. Need to pick up something."

Henry wasn't sure what to make of the cryptic response until they turned onto a long driveway about twenty minutes later and a large mansion appeared. He knew that house from the illustrations the quill had done when he'd gone back to record all the events that happened since his being given the book by Mary Margaret.

"Cruella's house?" he asked, confused. "Didn't she lose it or something?"

"The bank foreclosed. Part of her deal with your grandfather was him paying off what she owed. She had no interest in returning to the Enchanted Forest."

"Okaaaaaay, but she's dead. And she didn't have anything magical did she?"

Emma grimaced. "No, she didn't, but we're not here to loot a serial killer's stuff. The thing is, I don't fit in like I always did. Because I'm not entirely the me that I was when you found me, Kid. That was me but sort of like schizo with my sister for an anti-conscience. That was me using her darkness for stuff I want to say I wouldn't usually do, but maybe if I had my own darkness I wouldn't be so... out of sorts without her. She said I needed her darkness to be whole, and she wasn't entirely wrong. But it's _mine_ that I need."

"You want to find Lily again and take your darkness back," Henry deduced. Lily had left about six months ago with Maleficent, and everyone said it was to find Lily's father in some other realm. "But what makes you think she's here?"

"Simple detective work kid. I pulled some DMV records while my sister and Hook were playing tonsil hockey."

As the house drew closer, the Bug rounding large topiary bushes, a familiar roadster came into view. Cruella's car was parked out front.

"You didn't tell anyone, did you?" Henry deduced. "You think everyone would try to stop you if they knew."

"Wouldn't they?"

"I dunno. Maybe," conceded Henry.

"I don't want anyone suffering on my account, Kid," Emma explained. "So, I have to fix this. Then maybe we can all move forward."

Before Emma had even put the car into park, the front door opened and the sorceress emerged in a dressing down and curlers out of a 1940's Hollywood glam flick.

"You," Maleficent sighed, her expression pinched. "What do you want?"

"To help you and Lily," answered Emma.

"The only way you can help us is by returning what your parents stole," the ex-villainess retorted and Emma nodded.

"I know."

That took Maleficent by surprise and she uttered, "Oh... well... in that case, can I get you some coffee?"

"Do you have hot chocolate?" asked Emma.

"With cinnamon?" added Henry and Maleficent raised a brow at Emma.

"What happened to your usual Cuban style double black eye?"

Emma grimaced at the sense memory of many a cup of coffee with a shot of espresso and a shot of dark rum. "That was my evil twin sister's drink."

"Really?" uttered the ex-fairy thinking it was a joke at first, but Emma's expression was completely serious. "Well, that explains a lot then."

* * *

Regina was in the middle of preparing for a Council Meeting when a blonde barged into her office without knocking. She never did. Either one of them, actually, so they did have something in common, she thought with a glance at the morning's paper with the headline: TWO EMMA SWANS? BROKEN CURSE REVEALS TWINS MAGICALLY FUSED IN THE WOMB. It had side-by-side pictures of Emma when she became Sheriff and her sister's wedding photo from the paper. Honestly, they looked like completely different people. It was kind of unnerving. Bright-eyed and apple-cheeked vs. dead-eyed and hollow-cheeked. Apparently it wasn't the toll of being a savior that had facilitated such a decline...

Regina set her pen down and demanded, "Unless there's a world-ending crisis, whatever it is can wait until after the Council Meeting."

"I want to do a _séance_ ," the blonde stated, pushing her way inside.

"And I want a day without a family crisis," Regina retorted before replying, "You think you know of some dead person that can help with this case?"

"No. It's about Neal."

"You're brother?"

"No, the other one!"

Regina sighed again. "Séances only work for those in The Underworld, Emma. You can't just-"

"I'm _not_ Emma," (Not)Emma told her.

"Right, sorry." Regina rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Have you decided to go with 'Anna' then?"

"I don't know," (Not)Emma shrugged. "I'm still angry with my parents. But I suppose I'll have to settle on something to get a birth certificate made before figuring out the whole marriage mess. Why is there some stupid magic marriage book anyway?"

"To record the lineages of royals, obviously," Regina sighed. "Peerage is important in our world. The magic also helped prevent fraud in the case of anyone contesting the throne. If anyone had contested your father's rulership, for instance, it could have been used to prove he was not Prince James. Hence after the war ended his re-marriage to your mother using his true name - at least in the marriage documents if not the actual ceremony. The original submission by Lancelot to the Archbishop meant to help solidify alliances under two royal heirs was stricken from the book and replaced with 'Queen Snow White' and 'Prince Consort David of House Nuallain' - from which the curse derived 'Nolan', ironically meaning 'of noble birth'. Probably there was some nobleman many generations back who married a peasant and was disinherited."

"That's great," (Not)Emma boredly returned. "So, the séance to contact my sister's dead baby daddy."

Regina rubbed her temples. "I told you, the soul you want to contact has to be in The Underworld. He wasn't there."

"Yeah, and when I - me and Emma - had a vision of him on the way to The Underworld he said he wasn't there, and I was cool with believing that 'cause he complicated my life with Hook and having to deal with Henry, but does it really jive that his mom's unfinished business was apologizing to him for abandoning him as a kid, but she didn't even see him? I mean, she'd just be trapped there for eternity because he somehow got an automatic pass to Heaven for no reason? And like he had no unfinished business which is just the same amount of bullshit when he didn't get to see Henry before he died?

"I'm not emotionally invested, but it doesn't add up. And I don't like when things don't add up. I mean, I don't like it more when they don't fuck with my love life, but since that's not an issue anymore..."

"And your parents are badgering you over being horrible to your sister and Henry last night?" Regina pointed out, brow raised.

(Not)Emma sighed. "They're lecturing me on how rough she's got it, and it'd be a lot easier if she didn't. So... maybe if there's like some loophole that'll get me out of having to track down all of Emma's stuff that I 'gave to charity'."

Regina rolled her eyes. "You threw out everything when you moved into that serial killer house?"

"It was all old junk! And I didn't want to clear out the Bug's trunk to haul it to the store. Killian was keeping his collection of antique flasks in it."

"You're as bad as my sister ordering Robin to toss Neal's stuff in the trash. She didn't even bother pawning anything."

"Yeah, well, if they've got similar tastes, wasn't worth much."

"If there's a chance Neal didn't move on, why isn't your sister the one here trying to save her true love?" asked Regina, curious.

(Not)Emma shrugged. "It only just occurred to me when I was talking with Killian at the station earlier that it's weird. I mean, I never consciously thought about Emma's dead boyfriend and other than in like dream realms and maybe wish realms, Emma didn't have any thoughts of her own, just strong emotions. And in those brief moments she was picking daisies or empathizing with Gold about his dead son problems, I can't imagine she wanted to face he could be in a shitty situation and lied to her about it because he thought she'd rejected him in favor of his way hotter and more desirable step dad, what with my whole plan to split my heart with Killian that I butted into their conversation to ask him to help me with."

"Always what one wants to hear from their one true love," scoffed Regina.

"Yeah, I know, I get that it's a shitty thing to say to someone you're supposed to love who died like a month earlier," (Not)Emma conceded, "which'd be reason enough for a self-deprecating loser like that to just concede the fight. But it's weird. And Emma loves him. And I want to get my parents off my back. Which means that gets them off your back, bitching to you about their problems with me."

"That is true..."

"So can you help me or not? Otherwise I'm gonna have to spend hours at the station using the crap Internet connection searching Ebay for crap from Portland convenience stores because my wifi is out."

"What did you do? Knock the modem over while having sex in the hall closet?" Regina scoffed and at the other woman's sheepish look groaned in disgust. "I am never hanging my coat in there again!"

"It's not our fault! We were having sex on the couch and my mother just barged in! She always does that! It's seriously annoying!"

"She did that as a child all the time. Luckily, I was never having sex," Regina snorted. "Also, remind me never to sit on your couch again."

"So, will you help?"

"I'll think about it. After the Council Meeting. Until then, get out," the former Evil Queen grumbled, "I've had enough of your insipid family complicating my life."

* * *

Next up: Let the magic begin...


	7. Darkness and Light

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

Whatever Emma had been expecting when she saw Lily again, it wasn't the listless woman laying in a hospital style bed hooked up to IVs and with some strange skin affliction that reminded of that stuff on _Game of Thrones_.

"What's wrong with her?" asked Henry.

"As near as Rumple and Dr. Whale could tell, it's a sort of combination of magic and auto-immune disorder," answered Maleficent. "Lily showed me pictures of herself when she was younger and she obviously lost her skin pigmentation. They think that was the early stages and the disease accelerated when she first took dragon form. We'd hoped leaving Storybrooke with it's more active magic would slow the progression. We even searched through The Dragon's stock of potions brewed mixing the magic of both worlds. It helped for a few months, but the disease eventually overcame it."

"What exactly is 'your kind'?" Emma asked, never entirely clear on that.

"I was a fairy originally, as you know," answered Maleficent. "Ruel Ghorm exiled me for seeking to learn non-fairy magic and fraternizing with humans and other sentient species to learn their magic. Self-transfiguration was the magic that came most easily to me. Fairies can change their size, of course, reveal and hide their wings. We're shapeshifters by the nature of our magic, but restricted in how we express that since the Fey left our realm and returned to the lands of the gods. To tap into such Fey magic, to make the bonds our progenitors did is considered blasphemous. And so for using blood magic to bond with a dragon, thus acquiring dragon form, I was exiled. Unlike others, Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily for instance, I was too powerful for stripping my wings to take away my magic. My watered-down fairy magic, perhaps, but dragons are as ancient as the Blue Fairy, and in time I learned to control that transformation and learn others, but it was my first love, if you will, and my preferred form"

"And that's why you laid an egg as a dragon with a human baby in it?" Henry assumed.

Maleficent shook her head. "Lily was a dragonling. It was the spell that old geezer cast that forced her to take human form before she was ready, before she had hatched. And that may be where this all began. Her body is rejecting the human form but can't sustain the dragon one."

"Because she has too much darkness choking her light," said Emma.

"Perhaps."

"Why didn't you tell anyone? My parents?" Emma asked, confused. "Surely they would have agreed to do anything they could to help."

Maleficent scoffed. "Would they? Regina helped us acquire Cruella's estate after her death saw it given to Rumplestiltskin because she knew you and your parents would object to anything that would risk reducing your savior powers, even with unsavory side-effects, given how Storybrooke was under perpetual threats. I think she probably agreed, but she also felt guilty for having trapped me for all those years in dragon form."

"You never seemed to hold it against her," Emma considered. "Or me for trying to kill you, taking away your dragon form. Or trying to shoot Lily in the head, even if that was my sister. I expected you'd burn Storybrooke to the ground, not go out for coffee."

Maleficent smiled at that. "Oh, on principle it was a horrid thing what Regina did, but in practice... I kept my sanity far better that way than I think any one else in your little town of dual-identity do-gooders. I was able to... meditate in ways I hadn't tried since I was incubating my daughter, and went deeper still to an understanding I suspect few shapeshifters have of their transformation. I will never truly understand being a dragon, of course, but I came to understand patience and acceptance of fate, however unfair it may be, that all things pass, even ancient things, to give way to newer things that one day themselves might grow ancient and replaced."

"That sounds very... Zen," said Emma.

"I suppose I also read a bit too much of The Dragon's philosophical rantings while looking for a cure," Maleficent conceded. "It's rather a pity I only briefly crossed paths with him in The Enchanted Forest. I probably could have learned a great deal from that old shapeshifter. He has quite the treaties on the consequences of taking on another's magic, for better or worse. In my youthful arrogance none of it occurred to me, the possibility that my thirst for knowledge and magic, to feel one with an ancient life form so different from my sisters, might cost my daughter her life."

"You can't just purge the dragon magic from her?" asked Henry.

"I would have to return it to the dragon I took it from, which is sadly impossible because your grandfather killed him his first day playing prince."

"Oh," winced Henry and Emma grimaced too.

Maleficent sighed and lamented, "Humans see dragons as a threat because they seek to conquer everything, but it's humans who have destroyed their nesting grounds, who have marginalized them, who have hunted them for the sport of taking their heads and hearts as trophies.

"Ruel Ghorm may have objected to the spell I undertook, but the dragon willingly shared his heart-string - which essentially makes him Lily's father in as much as fairies can have a male progenitor as I split that to create her."

"Wait... so... you just... decided to get pregnant, turned into a dragon, and made yourself a baby?" Emma uttered.

"It wasn't a 'decision'," Maleficent corrected. "Magic and the breeding cycle of dragons compelled it. It was not something I expected to happen, but it changed me, those months in dragon form, protecting my child. I changed from the embittered woman rejected by her birth family, vilified by her adoptive one, and gained hope of changing things for her, for us. It felt like magic had given me a gift, finally had shown that I wasn't eternally damned for having left the Sisterhood, for trying to make my own way. Perhaps that was just the hormones given the ultimate end, as there was a price in the end," she concluded, tucking a lock of Lily's limp hair behind her scaly, pointy ear.

"Or maybe things just got screwed up," Emma stated, emphatic. "How can it be wrong if that dragon wanted to share his heart with you? I mean, okay, I don't get the inter-species love thing given my bad experience with a flying monkey, but if some thousand year old magical lizard decides a fallen fairy is his soulmate, then neither of you should get punished for it. I'm sorry my father got duped into that mess by King George and King Midas. I'm sure if he knew that was a good dragon who was a friend of humans - or if the dragon knew he wasn't really a genocide maniac prince, it could have ended differently and Lily could have known her father and maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Henry would have his dad here too," she concluded.

"Your family has indeed cost many people their happy endings while trying to claim their own."

Nodding, Emma conceded, "I know. But I want to try and fix that, if I can. Even if that means I'm not some mystical magical 'Savior' with a capital 'S' anymore. Being a real hero is making sacrifices to help others, right? This is the right thing to do."

"Well then," the sorceress took a breath, "let's give this a try."

"How exactly does this work?" asked Emma, pulling The Apprentice's wand from her jacket pocket. She just might have picked it from Zelena's pocket.

Shrugging, Maleficent took the wand and said, "Like this, I suppose."

* * *

"It's clearly _not_ working. Can we go already?" Zelena whined at the dining room table. "Or at least serve some food!"

Regina sighed at her bitchy sister. "I'll heat up leftovers."

"So..." Snow awkwardly asked the former Wicked Witch, "how is Robin?"

"The ear infection medication seems to be working. It's a relief to pass her off on Granny for a night, though, to be perfectly honest," shrugged Zelena. "I could have used a little spell I know, but I can't seem to find my wand. I still don't think it's fair that when I got my magic back, it could only be channeled through a wand."

"Oh, I don't know," Regina replied, "considering your condition, I think the Blue Fairy made a good call. What if you go off your meds and start conjuring tornado portals and throwing people through buildings again?"

"That was years ago," Zelena harumphed. "And I'm quite sure it had more to do with that shriveled ball sack wand you lot nicked off that old geezer sorcerer than my magic. Why would I want to drop on the town a bunch of giant, gaudy balloons full of people who didn't want to be here, have raised the cost of my property taxes, and keep using my bushes as a latrine? I'd have sent them all back where they came from if you'd let me. The last thing this town needed was one more seedy bar by the docks and another group of forest hobos who refuse to assimilate into the world of antibiotics and gender equality."

"Maybe you just wanted to annoy everyone without thinking of the long-term consequences," Regina shot back.

"Oh, please!" Zelena scoffed. "You can't blame that whole mess of a wish world on your better dressed half having a tryst. And it's not like _that_ hurt anyone either."

Snow interjected, "Regina murdered our wish selves thinking the world would end when Emma left it. It didn't. And now there's a Henry there who thinks his mother betrayed his kingdom."

Zelena shrugged. "And yet you were all on board helping the 'Evil Queen' get a happy ending there, and _not_ because you thought she'd get her just deserts at the end of torches and pitchforks. Emma has a point. I've seen trailer trash morons on those daytime judge shows who have a better understanding of justice than you and Prince Boring."

"I am not boring!" David snapped.

"Yes, you are," Zelena retorted. "I'm quite sure if that Isaac nutter wasn't altering events to facilitate creating his own world one day that required your existence, the natural course of reality would have let you bleed to death in little Emma's nursery. The only person around here more useless is Captain Cursed Cock over there," she flicked a finger toward Hook who glared.

"Excuse me?"

Regina sighed and informed, "Henry turned yours and whatever your name is," she gestured to Emma's sister, "wedding rings into contraceptives."

"WHAT!?" Hook bellowed

"So your sperm won't make babies and her womb is as barren as Agrabah's desert," chuffed Zelena

"I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS!"

"And here," snorted (Not)Emma, "I've been buying birth control pills over the counter to counteract the damn fertility meds."

"WHAT!?"

(Not)Emma rolled her eyes. "You wanted to knock me up. I didn't want to get knocked up. Seemed easier than-"

"Communicating?" Snow huffed. "Can you two have one conversation about your relationship without lying to each other?"

"Apparently not," shrugged (Not)Emma. "I know Killian actually did get on Nemo's ship intending to leave me. Saying after it turned out to be Gideon that sent him away before he could on his own that he'd never leave me was total bullshit, obviously. A lie for a lie," she concluded, "is the way we play it."

"Which worked out so well for me and Hades," Zelena snorted. "Good luck with that. And can we at least get cocktails and try summoning some other soul while we're here? Maybe Grandpa Richard is still in Underbrooke lamenting that his evil son hated him and his good son was too busy trying to save his murderer to have a father-son chat."

"Wait, my father was in The Underworld?" David squawked.

Zelena rolled her eyes. "I told you lot that Hades had sequester all your loved ones who wouldn't play by his script. Your daddy trying to get you and James to play along wouldn't have helped him... not that he would have wanted anything to do with the son who endangered his second born to help his first born reunite with his killer, I'm sure.

"And then there was Queen Eva," she scoffed. "I understand she 'worked' as a janitor and had a run-in with James in one of his more randy moods. I bet she rethought letting that rapist go to sit her butt on a throne."

"You're one to talk!" Snow hissed.

"And yet here I am, one of the family! All you goody-goodies whose forebears are mostly rotting in Hell. Cora turning her mill wheel. Liam probably getting keelhauled..."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Hook demand. "My brother went to Heaven!"

Zelena snorted. "You thought drowning a ship full of innocent men after making you a gambling-addicted alcoholic to prevent you from ever being promoted above him and tricking you into sleeping with a syphilitic whore to further rot your brain cells and then spending hundreds of years pouring drinks for other alcoholics _and then_ making a deal with Hades to hurt your twu wu'vs feewings to undermine her powers and lure you away to continue to be Liam's worshipful lapdog in exchange was going to just be swept away by one 'you're a better man, Killypoo!' fall off a cliff? Give me a break. Your brother was a psychopath who destroyed your life as much as your father ever did. Rather amusing then that Daddy named his third born after the first one which is what got him killed. Oh oh! Is the pirate going to cry?"

While Hook slumped in his chair looking truly devastated by this news - he always was far more emo than David - Zelena considered, "You know, I do wonder if Hades knew about the Evil Twin thing..."

"Maybe we should just call it a night?" the still unnamed Mrs. Jones interrupted with a sigh.

"Yes, please," Regina agreed. "I'm getting a migraine on top of last night's headache. I think I found a gray hair this morning..."

"Could be worse, sis," shrugged Zelena. "You could look like Skanky Swan."

The response she got was a cold glare.

"I've got nothing against wrinkles or gray hairs, luv," Hook insisted. "I mean, I never lost interest in Milah and she was older than both of us and had born a child. She was practically ancient, rea- _owe!_ "

"I'll get those leftovers!" the pirate's wife snarled at him, stomping off, followed by Regina.

David shook his head and stated, " _Mate_ , telling your wife that you think she's aged well because you have a thing for cougar MILFs is not getting you any of the latter."

"I was just trying to reassure her," groaned Hook. "I know she's self-conscious that she's not aged as... gracefully as your wife. And Regina. And now her sister. I've tried to reassure her that Emma was just in magical storage and I'm sure with all this moping and anger she'll catch up soon enough."

"That's not reassuring!" Snow groaned.

"It would definitely take being cursed over marrying you," scoffed Zelena. "I've always just assumed she had no space in the bathroom for her own cosmetics what with your disturbing eyeliner fetish."

"Eyeliner makes everyone look better," Hook argued. "I _have_ tried to get her to borrow some outside of weddings and magically forced-upon balls and such. She's oddly adverse to it."

"Probably some curse thing," shrugged Zelena. "Evil Twins are vane. Maybe keeping her from primping was some... subconscious way for the real Savior's magic to keep her from turning completely into you."

"Ha ha!"

Suddenly the lights flickered and went out and a wind blew through the dining room and doors slammed.

"I know that wind," shivered Snow just before a silvery mist appeared above them and coalesced into human-ish form in the corner of the room.

Just as Cora was oddly a young woman when her 'ghost' appeared, instead of grown man there stood a young boy of perhaps five or six. If not for the silver leaf pin on his cloak, the very same in the few depiction's of Rumplestiltskin's son in Henry's book, they might not have recognized the child.

"Baelfire?" Hook sputtered. "Is that really you?"

Instead of answering, the spirit lost its form and shot forward, right into Zelena's chest. The witch seized and leached and then lashed out and wrapped her hands around Hook's throat, choking the pirate and growling. "I'm going to kill you again!" until David and Snow could pry "her" off.

"Bloody hell, mate!"

"We're not mates," Not-Zelena said in a weird voice.

Hook countered, "Still mad that I lied about me and Emma shagging in Neverland? That was just to wind you up."

David and Snow glared at Hook who huffed. "What? I was engaged in a contest for your daughter's heart! And that was before I promised to play fair."

"You didn't play fair after that!" Not-Zelena/Neal growled.

"All right, fine," Hook wheezed, "but I didn't send you off to your death after saying I didn't want the peasant loser son of the Dark One to mess up my daughter's fake happiness even though I still expected you to risk your life on all manner of booby traps to help win back the castle of the woman who ruined Emma's life and fraudulently adopted and then gaslit her son from her evil sister and _then_ after said sister murdered you, name my second born after you out of guilt for being a selfish prick while using the opportunity to stand in my own spotlight of do-gooder-dom as everyone cheered me being so thoughtful as to honor your sacrifice that you might not have had to make at all if not for me wanting to throw away my first family and start over fresh without any badly dressed losers mucking it all up by reminding Emma she had parents."

Hook threw a smirking leering glare - which someone was a thing he could do - at Snow and Charming who deflated at that while Zelena's sharp eyes pinned them with an angry and hurt look.

"Yeah, that was pretty shitty of you guys," her possessor agreed.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" Snow squeaked out.

"It's insulting," Nealena told them, "and you should both be ashamed. Just like this bitch," he gestured to himself, "should be rotting in prison, not allowed to name her kid after the guy she raped to get pregnant, who got killed because she took her custody battle to The Underworld for an immortal dispshit she took a bike ride with once. You guys have completely fucked up ideas of how romantic love works, which you shoved down Emma's throat and you're doing the same to Henry - which is just one of the many reasons you all suck at parenting!"

"Yeah, Dr. Whale said something about that," shrugged Hook, "but I wasn't really listening. I was too busy worrying about the health of my true love that no matter what you think with your crazy Land Without Magic indoctrinated ways, is completely legit. Just happened to be it was with your true love's identical twin sister who'd been sharing her body for about thirty years."

"Why do you think I was trying to strangle you?" Nealena growled. "Every time I try to do something for Emma's good, we both get completely fucked! But you keep getting fucking free passes!"

"So... you _are_ in The Underworld?" Snow asked.

Blue eyes glared at her again and rolled. "Yeah, _obviously_. I didn't want Emma to come looking. I didn't want her looking down here for _anyone_ so I told her I was in a good place, but she just wouldn't let go of her infatuation with saving Hook.

"Just the thought of you," his glare turned to Hook, "suffering after trying to murder her entire family and calling her a useless orphan cramping your style and impersonating her son to taunt her was too much for her sister to bare."

"What can I say? My wife sees the good beneath my darkly handsome exterior," shrugged Hook.

"She's mentally unbalanced," Nealena stated, "and has a sex and alcohol addiction."

"Your point?"

"Neal," Snow prompted, "what happened after you warned Emma.?"

"I got her a message just before you guys arrived. Which was also when Hades found me and locked me up," sighed Nealena, "where I remained until Hades was killed and Zeus released all of the prisoners he'd kept locked away so we wouldn't interfere with you guys."

Hook snorted. "Thought you were good at lock-picking. Even I got out with one hand, mate!"

"He only put people in that useless dungeon that he wanted to escape, you idiot," groaned Nealena.

"He relocated Megara - not that bright of a girl - to get the lot of you chased by his three headed mutt and 'save' people so _you_ ," he said to Hook, "would have to carve names so that _he_ could then erase everyone's names so _no one_ would be suspicious that his rigged 'true love' test was just meant to distract Emma so she couldn't use her savior powers to stop him from fixing that damn crystal and escaping to Storybrooke."

"Huh... that does actually make more sense," Hook conceded. "So... why haven't you moved on? Is it because Hades tossed your mum in the River of Lost Souls? I do feel a bit bad about not even getting to see her."

Nealena rolled his/her eyes. again "No you don't. You replaced your obsession with my mother with your obsession for Emma - or her sister - like the sociopath you are. And, really, you were obsessed with my father in between the both of them. You're a sicko psycho, man. And of all the regrets I have in my life - and death - the biggest one is that instead of moving on, I told Zeus to save your syphilitic ass!"

"Wait," Hook sputtered, " _you're_ the reason I got brought back?"

Neal/Zelena scoffed. "You actually thought it was that you were remotely _worthy_ because you decided at the last second not to murder Emma's entire family after murdering the most powerful wizard in history and getting her to cover it up for you? Like that would make up for all of your murdering and raping and just being a massive douchebag since the moment you developed a drinking problem and got free of your bully of a big brother keeping your inner asshole in check?"

"Erm..."

"Emma loved you," Nealena stated with a sigh. "Or I _thought_ it was her who wanted to split her heart with you. All I've ever wanted was for Emma to find happiness. I screwed that up for her by trusting August. And when I saw the way she looked at you, after Pan recast the Curse, I knew I'd lost my chance. Didn't mean I wouldn't try to see my son again, but Emma seemed to have moved on. So even if I could be sent back, she'd already chosen you."

"But that wasn't Emma," sighed Snow. "That was her sister-"

"Who has the unhealthy mutual fixation with Hook, yeah."

"True love!" Hook interjected.

"Whatever," David groaned. "The point is, _Emma_ still loves you. She misses you."

"You think I don't know that _now_?" Neal/Zelena sighed and said, "Our love's been a series of tragedies. I just want Emma and Henry to be happy. It's better if they think I moved on."

"Wait," David interjected, "you haven't moved on. If your mother was your unfinished business-"

But it was too late, the lights were flickering, Zelena seized, and then after one jerking middle finger in Hook's direction, the silvery substance flew out of the Wicked Witch and dissipated like smoke.

Zelena looked at her raised hand and asked, "Is this directed at you or me?"

"Does it matter," muttered Hook, slouching in his chair. "I bloody literally owe _Baelfire_ my life. How am I supposed to pay that back? _Damn it!"_

"You could start by staying away from Emma and Henry," Snow told him, looking annoyed.

Just then the door to the kitchen burst open, the quasi-evil Swan sister demanding, "We heard shouting. Did it work?"

* * *

"Did it work?" Emma groaned, sitting up after she was pretty sure she'd passed out when it felt like someone was ripping her heart out and not the magical way while simultaneously crushing the air out of her lungs.

Neither Maleficent nor Henry answered, but they didn't need to. Already the scales were fading from Lily's skin which was, at first, pale, but then darkened. After a moment her eyelids fluttered open and she rasped out, "Mom?"

"Oh, my little girl!" Maleficent cried, enveloping her in a hug.

Lily returned it, confused, then spotted the blonde standing off to the side looking woozy. "Emma?"

"Ah, hey," Emma responded uncertainly. "I had no idea you were sick. No one told me."

"Didn't want to be a bother," Lily told her. "Storybrooke, The Enchanted Forest, whatever, needed you to be The Savior."

"I don't know about 'need'," Emma argued. "It's what they believed they needed because of what that spell made me at your expense, what Rumplestiltskin did with the result, what they wanted so they wouldn't have to try so hard to help themselves. Because of that, people died who didn't have to, people they could have helped if it hadn't all been on me. I'm sorry your life got messed up. I'm sorry my family didn't care. Hopefully, now, we can finally be who we were supposed to be."

"Hold on," blinked Lily, "you mean-"

"We reversed the spell that turned Emma into a savior," Maleficent nodded. "You don't have to struggle against an overwhelming darkness anymore, Lily."

"And maybe I'll stop getting burned by too much light," said Emma.

* * *

Next up: Underbrooke has seen some changes.


	8. The Undertaker

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE UNDERTAKER

A dreamcatcher in a window suddenly glowed bright gold and shot forth a blast of light that solidified into the standing form of Neal Cassidy, half dressed in the suit he'd been putting on when his soul was violently summoned to another realm.

After taking a moment to get acclimated, Neal looked around his apartment - a perfect replica of his real life one in Manhattan - and wondered again at how fucked up his life - and afterlife - was, how he just kept making sacrifices that didn't end the way he thought they would.

He'd given up Heaven for _Emma's sister's fuckboy_.

Her fuckboy that he never thought he'd see again, that was for sure... or at least not until Hook made a return trip to The Underworld and he could throw his _arse_ in the River of Lost Souls and pretend it was an accident.

Neal sighed and went back to putting on his tie, because this was Purgatory and in limbo he couldn't go to work in sweatpants and a hoodie or take a sick day and just stay curled up in bed hoping that this 'night' would be different and he'd actually get to sleep instead of laying awake, muddling over all of the mistakes in his life over and over until despite not having real physical form he ended up with a headache because eternal daylight was definitely worse than the eternal night of Neverland and he was starting to feel like Al Pacino in _Insomnia_.

He had a particularly bad one now, though maybe it was a result of the soul-summoning.

Neal hadn't considered that Emma's family would try a séance. After all, they were _supposed_ to believe he'd move on, beyond being contacted from the land of the living. Now they would surely tell her and he didn't know which option was more disheartening: that she would come looking for him or that she wouldn't.

"The Universe hates me," Neal said aloud as he finished with the morning routine, buttoning his vest that went with his suit - his only suit - that he'd worn to his first day at work in a job he never thought he'd get, actually doing something he loved - and that he'd barely had long enough to feel like he was finally living instead of just existing before Emma tracked him down and thus the beginning of his end.

Looking at the large charcoal sketch on his bookshelf, Neal figured that death was just something he'd been unknowingly running from since his father signed that contract to save him from that snakebite as a little boy, the choice that broke up the illusion of his happy nuclear family for good. Death had been stalking him ever since, but by being part of his darkly immortal father's story, Neal supposed he was always managing to avoid being caught. His death sentence had been stayed but not commuted, delayed until his father could find him - and then be the death of him.

And probably he'd sealed his own fate when he used that dagger on his father... only to promptly have any memory of doing so wiped from his mind. It was only in sharing his father's scattered thoughts and memories when they were joined that he discovered what he'd done to both of them and realized that his failure and his father's sacrifice had ruined them for ever finding that new beginning together in another world without magic.

Which just made his life, unaware of the darkness in his heart, all the more fucking tragic. But one would think that death would finally pay any debts owed. Then in Neal's case, one would be an idiot.

It just felt like every time he'd tried to take destiny into his own hands, it had blown up in not only his face, but hurt the people around him.

Outside the open window the sky was its perpetual hazy red, and Neal wished for rain as he pulled it shut. He wished for a reprieve from the unending disappointments that made up his existence. His unbeating heart that wasn't even real, because the real one was rotting in a coffin in Storybrooke, ached regardless of its illusionary existence.

Was it really better to have loved and lost then to have never loved when loving and losing meant watching someone else get the life and love that you were taken from, watch some get saved again and again like some sort of sick joke while the people you loved and gave your life for forgot you and replaced you?

Grimacing, Neal picked up the crystal ball on the nightstand and shoved it in his messenger bag along with his (replica) phone that didn't actually work as a phone here, but he had a few pictures and videos of Henry and even one with Emma at Granny's after they got back from Neverland.

It was easier to look at then watching the present unfolding inside that crystal ball, the births and weddings and his son growing up without him, life in that town going on without him as if he'd never existed at all.

And then finding out the truth too late to change his fate.

The story of his life.

After grabbing his keys - more habit than necessity - Neal headed out into this distopian New York City that seemed at times a merging of its worst periods, from the 1800's tenements to the 1970's crime and murder spree. No one ventured far south beyond mid-town as this version of the city came complete with the rubble of the World Trade Center, still with perpetually smoldering pockets. Like 'Underbrooke' with its burned out cars and demolished clock tower, it seemed that no matter what it resembled, The Underworld had to reflect some broken version of reality, whether a snapshot of some actual disaster or not.

Afterlife still went on, though, whether it was in a faux small town shaped to resemble one created by a curse, a replica of a kingdom that had imprisoned thousands of souls brainwashed to worship one man, or a likeness of a city that never slept and now had skies that never grew dark and were always tinged red - and a Central Park that looked like a renaissance fair, populated by those who had no interest in acclimating to more modern conditions - or were actually sentenced to live in one of the Hooverville-like Central Park slums.

Those being punished aside, the residents of The Underworld, whether they lived in high rises or huts, all seemed to transition seamlessly from backdrop to backdrop. When you were dead, it was hard to care overmuch what purgatory looked like, Neal supposed. Souls were either focused on making amends for what they'd done in life like some sort of twelve step program or in deep denial that they'd done anything wrong.

"Hey, you!" a voice called out from a park bench and Neal sighed.

Some... some souls were just assholes.

Neal tossed some change into the homeless man's cup.

"I don't want your fucking charity, arshole!" the guy shot back from his bench nest of newspapers, same as always. "I want my kingdom! It's mine! MINE!"

Neal paid him no mind, continuing on his way...

* * *

And the empty beer can the vagrant hurled in his direction went astray, instead clobbering a hung-over Cruella deVil on the way out of a nearby pub.

"You again!" she snarled. "Hit me with another one of your cans, you filthy vagrant-"

"And you'll what? Throw me in The Styx?" he taunted.

Cruella glared harder at the former King Arthur who was now the resident crazy homeless guy of Central Park West.

"Just because I can't personally send you into the drink doesn't mean I can't find someone else willing. I'm sure there are plenty of souls around here who'd gladly send you to eternal torment, Artie," she sneered before amending, "Just be glad Zeus himself didn't toss you in or sentence you to something more miserable than being a vagrant for your crimes."

"That's rich," Arthur scoffed, "from a woman who murdered her parents and would have gone on killing just for kicks if magic hadn't stopped you. I bet that smarts, doesn't it? Even here you can't throw your enemies in the drink!"

"But at least I can drink," Cruella shot back. "And I wasn't talking about the crimes you committed while your heart was still ticking, darling. I meant thinking 'finders keepers' was how one becomes Lord of The Underworld. What's the old saying... who's more the fool, the fool or the fool who follows him? And that would be you, Artie, sitting your butt on the throne of an absentee immortal and just assuming that made you the new king of purgatory who could shape it in your arcane fairy tale kingdom image."

"Someone had to take control after Hades left," Arthur argued. "Someone with experience leading."

"Experience brainwashing you mean. The gods have standards, darling," Cruella told him with a roll of her eyes while fishing through her coat for mini bar bottles of booze. "It's why they're eating ambrosia on Mt. Olympus and we're battling rats for slices of pizza. And also why they get to do all the murdering and raping and incesty stuff without punishment while we suffer... _thankfully_ with indoor plumbing. I'll take flushing my shit in a public toilet over fancy balls in your castle and shiting in a chamber pot any day, darling."

"I still don't see how exactly that ineloquent peasant trash has more of a right than I do," the former king whined.

Cruella rolled her eyes again and lit a cigarette. "He's the son of the Dark One, darling. Not to mention was the grandson of that crazy bint who made herself a fairy and trapped in some timeless realm got it into her head to try making herself into a goddess and destroying all the storied realms that Zeus has worked so very hard to keep intact and under his thumb."

"Yeah, well, that crazy bitch is dead and burning in Tartarus," Arthur reminded. "She's not going to be resurrecting anyone. Time to cut lose her once removed spawn and put someone important in charge!"

"Oh, please," Cruella scoffed. "He's far too interesting to part with. He made the ultimate sacrifice for true love _more than once_ ," she reminded. "A rather intriguing juxtaposition given his despicable fore bearers... and magic-obsessed spawn. Who wouldn't want to cage such an aberration whether or not their granny could use them as a pawn?

"And you may be 'important' in the spotlight of your own over-inflated ego, darling," Cruella continued, "but what have you done to warrant such a throne? Rape your wife for years, imprison her true love, conspire to murder your former best friend, get killed while plotting to take over Storybrooke, and get dragged along by a narcissistic manwhore into an underground cave whereupon, after managing to not fall in the acid bath of eternal torment, you deemed yourself a worthy monarch of all uncrreation. It hardly takes a genius to pick between the two. Most of us don't have syphilis eating our brains and a sympathetic erection for misogynist villains with narcissistic personality disorder."

Arthur smirked. "Oh, you're hilarious. And like you were never plotting. You wanted that quill to write yourself back to life. As if some child could. It was stolen from Mt. Olympus. Mortals were never meant to have it. Certainly not teenage brats or serial killers."

"I see, this is you trying to prove you have both dirt on me and vital information so we can team up and you can stab me the back," scoffed Cruella. "Darling, I know all there is to know. Mortals were never meant to control fire with magic, either, and now all that's left of poor Prometheus is a pathetic little spark fueled by wet panties that instead of destroying the Dark One was easily manipulated by Rumplestiltskin into making him an even bigger and badder Dark One.

"The gods unleashed destruction upon that which they helped create by misplacing their toys in our sandbox," Cruella stated, "and now they cling to what little control they still have by keeping us here in their kennel like unwanted strays and duping the masses into thinking this is the fate we earned, the natural step that comes after life. They throw us contrived villains 'The Evil Queen' and manipulate their feckless fairy stewards into turning any mortal who might discover the truth into a power-mad villain destined to be obliterated by some 'savior' with a true love pedigree and all of it written down by sad little rubes who wants to be important. All to preserve their status quo and keep us bound by the golden bindings in their books, Zeus' clever bit of recycling the chains he held our progenitor with as he was eating his liver with some fava beans and bottle of chianti."

Arthur harumphed and Cruella continued, "And I suppose the living think when we finally move into that pretty white light even murderers like us go to a farm upstate for retired souls. As if Zeus wants the most despicable of humans as competition at Mt. Olympus and his Elysium summer palace. Or the best ones who fought for justice and kittens and puppies wising up to the pretty prison they're frolicking in and forming a rebellion to free us. A prison is a prison, whether it's burning pits of fire or a field of wildflowers.

"But no prison is eternal," she told the dethroned king with a smirk. "All curses end, even the ones served up as the stewardship of benevolent gods. The Titans fell, overthrown by their ignorant, spoiled, angry children. The souls here, we're just like those divine babies. And the gods, they've become just as complacent as their fore bearers. Two and a half millennia is a _long_ time for any magical scheme to sustain itself, even with the belief of the gods behind it. And when that dynasty does come crumbling down... I'll be ready and waiting to take full advantage!"

"To what, get the classiest fire pit to Tartarus?" asked Arthur.

"Just buy yourself some deodorant!"

Cruella tossed some coins in Arthur's cracked replica of the Holy Grail, took a swig from a mini bottle of gin, and sauntered to her car. That idiotic ex-monarch was not going to ruin the one scrap of hope that kept her from going insane in this wasteland of vacant skyscrapers and empty streets.

* * *

Neal's mood was not particularly improved when he got to The Central Library, but then he couldn't say his mood was all that great when he was alive and visiting the real library. One good thing about New York was that most people functioned daily while in a low-grade depression, so no one ever asked if he was okay.

With a sigh, he set his messenger bag on a table and took in his rather stuffy and austere headquarters. Sometimes he wished he'd picked Coney Island, but this place was more logical for his intentions... and, anyway, anything beyond Manhattan didn't really exist and while there was a certain _Inception-_ esque quality to what he supposed might as well be called Underhattan, it was easier to keep it more-or-less the same layout as the real city... just with the augmenting of the rivers to account for Lamentation, Woe, Forgetfulness, Fire, and the River of Unbreakable Oath/Hate/Lost Souls (AKA the one everyone feared also known as The Styx).

Unfortunately for Neal, he'd taken his oath to Zeus in the latter. Taking a dip in that green soup had made Achilles virtually invincible, and so it also made Neal immune to being tossed in by some unhappy constituent, but it also tied his soul to The Underworld.

Presumably, if he reigned long enough and well enough, he could become a god or demi-god, eat some Ambrosia up at Mt. Olympus and get true physical form back, his heart back with benefits as had happened with others like Persephone - and was something, of course, Zeus had done for his son and might yet with Hercules' girlfriend... which on the one hand was fair since Zeus forcing the kid to undertake that trial got them both killed, but on the other was serious favoritism that had a number of people down here ticked off.

Not that Mt. Olympus was as great as people thought.

Neal could visit Mt. Olympus for realm-supervisory-related meetings, and it was really just lots of white marble buildings with colonnades and fountains and people in togas having feasts and orgies. They were really into orgies. And incest. Zeus had married his own sister after all, and then had his daughter by his mistress marry Hades and was totally cool with his brother raping the girl until her mother finally rescued her.

So, it wasn't like Zeus had voiced any moral objection to sending Hook back to the land of the living when Neal had made the request. The gods were basically a bunch of misogynist, misandry-preaching frat boys who schemed all kinds of shit behind the backs of the goddesses that they tried to keep in their place to varying degrees of success. Being immortal didn't mean being _moral_. Which made those meetings pretty disheartening.

Mt. Olympus, The Underworld, The Elyssian Fields, Atlantis, were all basically run by a family of two millennia old self-absorbed pricks who took a disturbing "white man's burden" approach to overseeing the matters of mortals and their souls, just replacing the "white" with "mostly white and immortal". Poor unevolved little mortals needed their stewardship, their purgatory, their trials, their punishment and rewards to one day _far far in the future_ be as the gods themselves.

Neal wasn't exactly clear how that all got fucked up, how the magical worlds got out of step with time in, say, the so-called Land Without Magic, or how/why/when the people in them essentially had their souls enslaved to the gods by writing their stories down. Sadly, even those Land of Untold Stories people hadn't been able to escape thanks to Emma's family and Henry's newfound calling.

Although from what he understood, that land didn't even exist until "Emma" went back in time. It was some sort of quick-fix Zeus created to prevent all the paradoxes suddenly created from causing some cascade failure that ripped the magical worlds apart in a way far more permanent than what Fiona had attempted. Being dead and Lord of The Underworld did, at least, give Neal the "insight" other mortal souls didn't have on what had been to compare to what was now... in the event those discrepancies, alterations, and paradoxes affected the workings of this realm: first stop for all souls branded property of what amounted to the Mt. Olympus Publishing Company.

They weren't saved by the gods. They were damned by them.

They were _all_ damned in every magical world you could visit through that "mysterious" burned hat that now sat in a case in the Library. One more MacGuffin sent by the gods to turn a mortal into a chump to twist the narrative to their liking. Book after book for generations, each one re-strengthening their control.

And now with Henry as The Author writing stories that tied people to The Land Without Magic, people were showing up here who _really_ shouldn't be.

Some bike messenger who'd tossed pennies in that fountain during Henry's speech got hit by a car last week and showed up here - the third person after another speech attendee was shot in a mugging and a guy staying in that hotel room suffered a heart attack - which led to another big mess at the Halls of Justice to which he wasn't invited to discuss if there was some workaround of The Book magic to exclude anyone born in The Land Without Magic outside of Storybrooke or prevent Henry from writing anything that included people not of the designated magical worlds.

The last had been used to claim The Land Without Magic as well.

Who could say what nefarious ideas Zeus had for epic tales in the new one that Henry had begun after the defeat of Neal's grandmother? It would be nothing well story-boarded out, that was certain, and full of centuries old tropes and scores of innocent victims, no doubt.

Neal's job would just keep getting harder.

As much as the gods loved lording over humans and other mortal sentients, The Underworld was getting quite full - one of the reasons for upscaling from a setting like Storybrooke and something more modern than Camelot or whatever Hades had it before. "The Bad Place" that made Rikers look like paradise was even more crowded, and since, for some reason - maybe how The Authors chose to record things with some dramatic artistic license - an unusual majority of souls were, well, assholes who were given at least some length of sentence either in Tartarus or what amounted to probation or community service here in The Underworld, things were getting pretty out of balance.

And when the realms of the gods were out of whack, magic itself in the lands under their stewardship started to break down... as evidenced by a number of previously impossible things like time travel, two Dark Ones, and his father becoming an _uber_ Dark One.

No doubt the new book was going to be an attempt to tie up all the paradoxical loose ends, settle the currents of magic that were apparently more turbulent than usual as one anthology, one season of stories came to an end and another began. Things were always most vulnerable in the "happy beginning" and Neal now was certain his duping into employment here was meant to ease that transition, ensure no ground was lost at Mt. Olympus until the moment of contrived true love and tragedies became self-perpetuating and sustaining.

Neal sighed.

If he had known all of the bullshit he'd have to put up with, he never would have made that deal with Zeus. He'd have moved on to The Elysian fields however much of a con _that_ was too were he could at least have been given the option to be reincarnated and maybe have a chance at a life that didn't suck, since he had to have built up some good karma with his suffering in this past life.

Okay, maybe he still would have made the deal because he wanted Emma to be happy and he thought Emma wanted Hook for that. And because ignorance was never bliss. He'd just have been inserting himself back into an endless cycle of manufactured fate. This job, to being Zeus' bitch, was better than going back to being a mindless bug in the god's ant farm.

It could be worse, Neal supposed. He could be stuck with Charon's job, ferrying souls from the various storybook worlds - and the occasional freaked out bike messenger - bound to The Underworld by the magical quill. That guy also had to check in on the souls tossed in The Styx that were always trying to claw their way back here from Tartarus. The Lost Souls had a particularly shitty existence. Like Dark Ones, their souls were splintered, existing half (in body) in Tartarus and half (in spirit) in the magical currents of the River so that they never felt whole, were always tormented, as they walked aimlessly without a set destination in that wasteland, chased by monsters, attacked by guards and prisoners alike. In the chaste system that made up Tartarus, the Lost Souls were The Untouchables, filthy, unclean, ostracized.

Of course, Neal's mother was one of those tormented souls.

He was conflicted about Milah. She'd hurt him badly, but she'd also spent the last 300 years turning Hades' punishment into something she'd actually, by all accounts, taken very seriously. In the Book of Judgment, the tally beside her name had been in her favor to get paroled after she completed her unfinished business of apologizing to him. She could have gotten sent to Elysium and even if it most likely would have been in a servant position until she'd proven that she was truly reformed and worthy of happiness in the Afterlife, anything was better than the situation she'd been thrown into.

Not that all deserved better than that. James and Gaston had little redeeming in their files. His grandfather was the worst of assholes magically speaking who'd put all of his anger at his wife onto his son and treated him horribly... but he was also duped, given a magic bean by his son via his sister who unknowingly received it from Neal's grandmother who was, maybe, trying to do her son a kindness by ridding him of his father. But the darkness involved in her scheming came back to bite Neal and his son in the ass.

Neal's meeting with his _grandmother_... that was not something he wanted to relive. He hated her and he pitied her. She'd discovered the truth in the books Tiger Lily foolishly gave her. Yes, she had a darkness in her, a craving for power that derailed her from what could have been a rebellion to take down the gods, but she was also used and tricked by the Blue Fairy... just as Neal himself had been.

And all to entertain the gods. _As The Enchanted Forest Turns_ :, longest running TV show equivalent on Mt. Olympus. Sinking ratings, though. Had to reboot with a new narrative to keep the lesser gods interested. Marry Emma off to the Pirate, defeat a suddenly revealed new but always there Villain behind the whole Dark Curse scheme - then start over with a few of the same players and a new twist: Emma had an Evil Twin who was playing Savior for years without anyone knowing!

You'd think being Lord of The Underworld Neal could do something about this fucking mess. But he wasn't a god. And even Hades had failed to make his own changes up against Zeus and his allies.

So, for now, Neal went about his administrative duties of checking the replica of Henry's latest book for additions to the stories and then The Book of the Dead for new arrivals and departures. People arrived every day; he didn't need to personally greet most of them as they had relatives or friends here to help them adjust, which was a relief. The souls who had no one here, he read their stories and tried to help them adjust. The souls who had no one back in life either and/or no one waiting for them in a good place were the hardest. Neal spared them the truth about the prison they were stuck in: he'd probably be severely punished if he did, and after enduring Hades' punishment for contacting Emma, Neal really didn't want to feel _Zeus'_ full wrath.

The people likely going to Tartarus, Neal didn't prank them like Hades with mirages of happiness. They had enough cruelty coming their way and false hope was a terrible thing to give anyone. Those who had tried to better themselves at least got to speak before the court. Those who hadn't... or did too late, only when they realized their time was running out and it came from desperation rather than genuine remorse, they went straight to Tartarus. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Prince Henry I - one of the first souls here whom Neal had met when he arrived - had gotten a trial and probation in Elysium for trying to do good acts in The Underworld - like playing Walmart greeter for new souls - and helping his daughter when she came here to let go of the pain of killing him, of her lost love, while showing her how to hold onto the love for them both. He'd been cowardly in life, but married to a horrifically abusive woman and then in service of a magically addicted daughter who murdered him, the court did take that into account, and that his last act was a counter intuitively courageous one: by not standing up to his daughter when she informed him of his death - she would kill him anyway - he left her with the memory of that selfless act that ate away at her, influenced the naming of her adoptive son, and eventually led to her choosing to try redeeming herself prior to death like most.

Cora and Liam... had not such a pleasant ending. Cora's last ditch redemption was voided by scheming to pit her daughters against one another in a deal with Hades to regain her "mayor" position. Even if she had some remorse for sending Zelena back to an abusive adoptive father, the woman was a psychopath and would be turning a milling wheel for eternity. Liam's last act was viewed even more suspiciously given that regardless of his deal with Hades to belittle "Emma" into losing all self-esteem and get her to go along with his heart-weighing-trial really did want to keep his brother in The Underworld so he could bully him and manipulate him the way he had in life. Using the men he murdered to try to achieve both goals was all his idea.

They went to Elysium.

Liam got one of the more... unique punishments in Tartarus reserved for the worst of the worst who sailed the high seas: serving as Davy Jones' cabin boy.

The Book of The Damned detailed all sentences in Tartarus and whether any revisions needed to be made, paroles considered.

Neal tossed aside that particular book, not having the stomach today to deal with finding out some mass murderer had been paroled back to his realm for supervision and check-ins.

"Late night?"

The voice caused Neal to startle and he turned toward a plump redhead pushing a breakfast cart.

"Sorry," Johanna apologized. "You just look like you had a rough one, M'Lord."

"You could say that. And don't call me 'M'Lord'," Neal sighed. "I told you, 'Neal' is fine. I'll even take 'Baelfire' over that."

"I'm a woman of tradition," Johanna argued, "and you're a man of title, even if it was earned rather than inherited."

"I don't know about earned. More like foolishly accepted for love," Neal told her with a grimace. "I just keep losing. I mean are some people just supposed to lose? For balance in the universe? Like are there just some people on Earth who are supposed to be here just to make it easier for the winners? Or is it all the gods' doing?"

"I think it's a symptom of the way things are, not the way they're supposed to be," Johanna replied, brows furrowing in question.

Neal let out a sigh and explained, "Turns out Emma has an Evil Twin. The curse-created kind. They were magically merged before birth and thanks to Zelena taking away Emma's magic, her sister took control. So it was _her sister_ who came here for Hook, not Emma."

"Well, that's tragic irony for you," scoffed Johanna with a sympathetic look. "Like trying to cheer up your former employer with a birthday present and by doing so getting targeted by a psychopath who throws you off a clock tower to your death less than a day later."

Neal winced. Johanna, like him, and others connected to Emma's family had been 'sequester' by Hades so only those he wanted could 'interfere' as part of his escape plan. The older woman's unfinished business was nothing required for her to move on, though, not now that Cora had already been judged, but she'd stayed to help him - and maybe some for the Storybrooke gossip he was able to relay. Neal suspected she was looking for just a crumb of evidence that the family she'd faithfully served even remembered her.

"Sucks when it seems the people you were trying to help don't give a shit about you anymore," Neal nodded. "Also sucks to find out maybe at least one did, but it's too late now to matter." He snorted. "Evil Twin. That just figures, I guess."

"As far as foreshadowing and long-term plot planning go," Johanna shrugged, "you have to admit that it does add a clever twist to the new narrative. Emma Swan found her happily ever after as Mrs. Jones - only she didn't! The drama of twins pitted against each other is entertaining, I suppose, and never quite realized with David and James."

"But have their animosity tied to that curse and some magical doohicky to keep the good one from getting killed before birth, and it sets up for a good twist regarding last season's Savior," Neal muttered. "You realize how screwed up it is thinking about the world we lived in like it's a soap opera?"

Johanna shrugged. "It is what it is. And I don't have anyone left there to feel sorry that they're stuck in that mess. Do you know Snow picked those snowbells for her daughter's wedding bouquet from my grave? That's the only time she ever visited. And she didn't even say a word. Just snipped them off and went on her merry way to sing and dance and not once think about the ceremony overlooking the spot where my brains got splattered on the pavement. Forget past scars? I was never even a pimple on her snow white arse!"

"Speaking of asses," Neal realized the time, "I really should see to the prisoner."

Johanna grimaced at that. "I don't know why you don't just throw him in the drink."

"He's too dangerous to just let roam Tartarus without a strict and eternal sentence."

"I suppose so," Johanna agreed, adding, "There's nothing worse than evil that masquerades as good. He's ruined many lives. If anyone should be sentenced without trial to freeze his nuts off in the deepest pits of Hell, it's him."

"No one's saying he won't be once we know what he's been planning," Neal told her and took his bagel from the tray. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Neal," she told him pointedly, "You're a good and brave man. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. Especially that git!"

"Yeah, but I'm not a hero. Or a legend either," he countered, "and thanks to that damned quill, those are the only kind that matter."

Johanna had no refute for that and Neal left her, walking quickly to the bank of elevators that went down to a basement dungeon lair that very much resembled Hades digs down to the bubbling green river... that probably was a fair approximation of New York's sewer system.

From the main cavern, Neal headed toward the dungeons, coming across a very powerful figure armed with a sword, a shaggy beard and a fierce face.

"Lord Baelfire," the figure greeted in passing.

Neal didn't bother trying to correct him and offered a nod. "Mors," he returned, Thanatos' nickname, just before the not-exactly-a-god being vanished in a cloud of black smoke.

The guy was the "son of Night and the twin brother of Sleep" ...and possibly first cousin of Morpheus, God of Dreams, Neal wasn't quite sure. But as the personification of death itself, it was his duty to severe souls from their physical bodies so Charon could ferry them here. Unlike Charon, he was rarely seen in the mortal world, even magical ones. Generally, he took lives by cutting threads on the tapestries of fate woven by Zeus' daughters, birthed by Prometheus' mother who lost her husband to the war with The Titans and was forced to marry Zeus to, as Neal understood it, reduce her son's sentence. Of course, Zeus never upheld his part of that agreement. Once The Fates were born to help Zeus control fate (so their names were a bogus form of gloating), Prometheus ended up cast from imprisonment at Mt Olympus to the inner circle of Tartarus and his mother's magical divination powers and dominion over the court that judged mortals was given to Apollo. Zeus had eventually grown tired of that wife, what with his constant battles with Hera over having other wives and lovers, and moved on to others like the goddess who bore him Persephone... whom he then got tired of, leaving that child to rape and misery, and so on and so on.

Zeus was the ultimate deadbeat dad and sexual predator. Neal at least had that to ease his guilt some. He hadn't been a good father himself, but he'd never intentionally married his daughter to his rapist brother. Or raped anyone. And the only guy he killed was a psycho who got hundreds of men killed to pull a con job to get a medal. Of course, not being complete scum didn't make him feel any less of a failure as a father or just a good person . He had a son he barely got know and a brother he never met... who would now grow up never remembering the friend his grandmother murdered who couldn't just go back to being a baby in the time they were taken from... creating more fucking paradoxes... which maybe Fiona knew would be the case if Gideon failed so even if she couldn't overthrow Zeus and put her ass on his throne, she would have at least created more plotholes and contradictions he had to fix before it collapsed like a house of cards all on its own.

He'd bet "The Prisoner" knew all the details of that too, everything that didn't end up in the watered down, sanitized book versions. That was part of the reason the man was here, someone so corrupted that Neal was pretty sure he guy might get soul-annihilation using the Olympian Crystal rather than an eternal sentence to Tartarus when all was said and done. His list of high crimes made Neal's child-slave-labor grandmother look like an actual fairy godmother. There was no way he'd escape anything but the most severe punishment.

And, of course, the prisoner seemed to know it - but also didn't seem that bothered. And that really bothered Neal.

He reached the cell a minute later and its occupant emerged from the shadows with a deceptively innocent grin.

"My Lord, what brings you here today?"

* * *

AN: Did you expect Neal would be Hades replacement? And who is the prisoner? "One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression" is from _Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?_ by Mindy Kaling. "I just keep losing..." is from a scene in _Atlanta_ between Earn and a fellow bus passenger.

Next up: Neal has a chat with the prisoner while Emma and Henry go on a quest.


	9. The Artist & The Prisoner

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER NINE

THE ARTIST & THE PRISONER

Their first morning back in Manhattan Emma and Henry had sorted through Neal's apartment looking for anything that would shed some light on the life he'd lived. Robin, unfortunately, had trashed all of his identification and other papers - probably at Zelena's urging - so there were no bank statements that would point in the direction of a safe deposit box or paycheck stubs that would indicate where Neal had worked.

Thankfully, Emma did find a business card in a pocket of a black messenger bag that Robin must have been using from the filled-out employment applications and fake I.D.s Regina had made for him. The card, for an upscale publishing company in midtown, didn't jive with the rest.

A woman with severely cut hair and glasses far more expensive and flattering than Emma's met them at the reception desk while picking up her fancy Starbucks order and introduced herself as the head of the Graphic Art Department.

"Yes, Neal Cassidy," she nodded. "He was an odd case. Never actually applied, but one of our editors happened on him in Central Park and liked his portfolio. He worked here for six months or so then took a leave of absence for a family emergency and we never heard back. One of our interns even went by his apartment after his phone was disconnected. The building's super said his apartment had been recently bought by his father. That's all we ever found out. It was a disappointment, really. I was going to promote him. He showed the illustrative talent as well as a good head for numbers that could have gotten him my job one day, or at another company. I wondered if he'd gotten poached, but he didn't seem the type to just go off the grid like that, leave without further notice."

Emma almost smiled wryly at how much that actually was like Neal. Or had been. Instead she explained with a frown, "He passed away, actually."

"Yeah," scowled Henry. "My aunt-"

"Neal took time off to see his sister," Emma ad-libbed before Henry could tell some sordid magical murder tale, "and help out their father who was having heart problems, but it turned out Neal's fiancée was a con artist living with some other guy. They were after his father's money and Neal ended up getting shot in an altercation."

"How horrible," the bespeckled woman gasped before amending, "I did meet that fiancée of his once. I remember him going on about her training for marathons or some such thing. Personally, I didn't like her. She gave off a vibe like she was after something, but Neal certainly didn't have much to go after for someone like that. Of course... I had no idea his father was wealthy. He never talked about his family other than saying his mother had passed when he was young and he'd had some falling out with his father years ago."

Henry snorted lightly at that and Emma asked, "We're just trying to find out more about Neal's life here in New York. We... we were estranged for a long time. Henry wanted to know more about his dad."

"Well, that's all I can really tell you," the woman replied. "That editor doesn't work here anymore and, as I said, Neal never filled out an application or gave us a resume. I think Steve's at Pendant now. Maybe he could help you."

* * *

"My Lord, what brings you here today?"

"Cut the crap, old man," Neal addressed "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" while crushing down his unease at the Hannibal Lector vibes the guy projected.

"Always so pleasant!"

Neal glowered. The old sorcerer had given him the creeps since he appeared in The Underworld after having his own life-force snuffed about by the disembodied essence of Ye Olde Dark One. It wasn't until he got Hades' job, however, that Neal had access to his books and the records of all the man's crimes against humanity, magic, worlds, time... the list went on. He'd intentionally unleashed The Darkness from Neal's father to attack Emma, for instance, though it wasn't clear if he had anticipated his own death or not. Perhaps he considered it a necessary sacrifice to bring about whatever long con he'd been plotting for centuries. It also wasn't clear if he'd been in league with Neal's grandmother to bring about events that would set her free, her adversary who was trying to destroy the Dark One to throw a wrench in her plans, or just some other nutjob with an agenda spawned from discovering the truth about the gods controlling their worlds.

Whatever the old geezer was up to, he had hired/duped Cruella deVil in his successful plan to resurrect the quill, thus ensuring the current book could end, the "Final Battle" could be fought, and the next series could begin, culling all the new souls conceived afterward for this one. Again, it wasn't clear if the old guy had wanted Henry to write him back to life as Cruella had intended for herself or if he'd preferred remaining here to just sit back and watch the mortal world crumble under Fiona's spell... or uncrumble with Henry's true love's kiss. At this point, Neal didn't expect to ever get those answers out of the guy. But maybe he could get some others.

"Did you know that Snow White was carrying twins when you cast that spell on her?" Neal demanded.

The Apprentice stood a bit straighter and tipped his head. His scraggly beard and wizard robes that had once given him a wise Dumbledore look now gave himself something of a crazy Taliban guy look and one had to wonder if he didn't have some similarly fucked up ideology behind all of his sketchy actions.

"Have her daughters finally come undone then?" the old geezer asked, smiling a little.

Glaring, Neal confirmed, "Yeah. So, you knew and you didn't say anything."

"It's not like I'm the only one," he shrugged. "Rhuel Ghorm, your trusted magic bean dealer, knew as well. She had as much of a hand in that ruse as I, setting up her contingency plans against her counterfeit sister. Thinking I was just one of her rubes. Oh, but I knew. I had my own reasons for going along with it. Reasons you don't need to know."

Neal glared even harder. "Did you also know that Emma's sister took control after Zelena took her magic?"

"And thus her heart while merged with and subverted in her sister's could be plucked out by anyone," shrugged The Apprentice. "Anyone with a brain should have been able to figure out that something drastic had changed with The Savior when the cardinal rules no longer applied. Including you. Your true love supposedly meets you in Morpheus' realm but all she can talk about is saving a man she's barely met and fucked in a bed of flowers created by the first Dark One, fertilized with Avalon Sand, and all-around giving off a rather skanky and betrayal sort of stench underneath the fake rose smell.

"But, of course, your self-esteme was always rather pathetic," mused the old man, "after your father let you fall through hat portal. I suppose it seemed just your sort of fate for her happily ever after to be the stepfather who handed you to a pedophile... and his demonic employer who just happened to be your grandfather.

"It must have been so fun," the old man continued with a gleeful sneer, "watching the woman you loved, the son you never really knew, falling all over themselves to bring that psychopath the happiness you deserved. Destroying all your momentoes and moments. Your dreamcatcher. Sailing with your boy. Never visiting your grave. Claiming it was him who made your true love believe in that very thing... through all his scheming, lying, murdering of Emma's family members to which they all said 'oh, it's in the past, go fuck her please while we break into song over such perfection!'"

Clenching his fists, Neal pushed down his hurt. And there was a lot of it. But he'd had a long life to practice acting 'chill' when a storm was raging inside.

"You showed up to turn Lily into a stalking psychopath for no apparent reason other than to put her on a collision course with Emma's sister," Neal changed the subject. "Was that to make it harder for Emma to regain control?"

The old man tapped his nose. "Perhaps you're not as stupid as you look."

"You were trying to get Merlin, your own mentor, killed," Neal continued. "And you wanted my son to take over for Isaac. And I _know_ you know that being The Author is not some glorious task. You duped a teenage boy into helping reap more souls for this realm, souls from a world the gods don't even want here. After you used Isaac to do your bidding, letting him think he was in control of the stories he was changing. When he took it too far, you made sure someone would be available to fire him for him. My son.

" _And_ ," Neal continued, "you made sure that even if he left Storybrooke for an ordinary life, he wouldn't live it very long."

"Loose ends have to be tied up," the old man shrugged. "I left a little spell that drew a certain former queen to a certain car that might have been tampered with. Sadly, your son's family can't seem to learn the difference between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy. They have this odd little quirk of a habit of holding generational grudges against the former and taking the later to bed to pop out those future generations.

"Something to do with the gods, I suppose," he theorized. "They enjoy the drama of unfairly persecuted anti-heroes and glorified mass murderers. It's their origin story told over and over in every one of those books using us as stand-ins. Oh, they change the story up now and then, end a story or a book, start a new one. Births, deaths, marriages, it doesn't really matter. It's all trying to reassure themselves that they're the heroes who overcame great odds to overthrow ruthless despots. Perhaps they were for the blink of an eye. But blood runs thicker than the water in The Styx. And they became tyrants themselves. Titans. Gods. Different names for the same greedy, cruel immortals who just traded making monsters to unleash on the worlds to becoming monsters who use us as toys... or scribes."

Neal narrowed his eyes. "You hate the gods and you continued that line. Henry's not recording history, he's writing an unbreakable contract that gives the gods the authority to bless or damn anyone who gets their story penned by that quill in one of those creepy books. Anyone who knew that would want the power to have themselves written out of it."

The Apprentice smirked. "And you were ever so close to figuring that out for yourself when you found those books at that library in your quest to destroy magic. If you hadn't given up so quickly, you might have been the hero to free your family from their fate. To free yourself from yours. Alas, you gave up your childish pursuits to mop floors and steal cars, to impermanent the girl whose child would bind another world, who would damn his own uncle with that sweet little lullaby to Zeus' casting couch."

After a pause, he told Neal, "But none of that is my fault. Whether I played the part the Blue Fairy intended for me or diverged with my own agenda, she would have fulfilled the duty that Zeus gave her, the steward, the watchman who pushed back when mortals tried to assert more free will than their stories intended. Emma still would have ended up essentially alone in that wardrobe because her parents shouldn't even be allowed to raise a goldfish. Her sister still would have assumed control because Snow White's mother betrayed a peasant who abandoned a child who used the perception of love for revenge. Most of what has come to pass was how the gods envisioned it, whether how Snow White and Prince Charming met... or how they met differently to revise a few decades, change little things here and there to alter the plot to a new idea that could transition to a new narrative. Is it dangerous creating such paradoxes by violating the rules of magic? Of course, but Zeus has an unmatched ego."

"Yours seems pretty inflated," Neal challenged. "What's your game, old man?"

"Now you're asking the wrong question, Baelfire."

"You wanted to ensure Emma was born The Savior but with a stowaway bizarre version of her that was apathetic enough to let Henry wander around here unsupervised so you could appeal to his adolescent need to be as important as his 'legendary' family. You wanted everything, more or less, that happened to happen and had contingency plans in place for if and when they didn't. So did others, but you're the wildcard that none of them quite figured out. A double agent or working your own con. But what did you ever get out of it? You don't have that quill. You never used those shears to separate yourself from the destiny The Fates might have woven for you. Why?"

"Perhaps this is my fate. Perhaps I was ensuring no one else could change it," he shrugged. "I knew I'd end up here eventually. And don't pretend you've any love for your keeper or that you're here because he demanded it. You're here for yourself, for your own answers, your own revenge on the happiness stolen from you. And Zeus knows it.

"Gods know _all_ in the hearts and minds of mortals," The Apprentice cackled. "You think Zeus had no idea that it wasn't Emma who came for that pirate? But Hades was about to make a play for Olympus and had to be stopped so Zeus needed a new warden and you were willing. Your grandmother's plan was almost fully baked, and your sister-in-law's desperation for her pirate played the part required while you, the failed champion to keep your father in the Light, would have only drawn that overly drawn-out storyline on longer.

"It mattered not to Zeus that you were acting on falsehoods, on truths he knew but chose not to disclose to ensure he got what he wanted. You're his bitch, boy. Everyone is. And there are no magical pruning shears that can sever your soul from this realm and turn you back into an ordinary loser."

Glowering, Neal inquired, "So, what, this was all about a failed plot to take down Olympus with my grandmother?"

"Oh, let the gods have their mountain. But having dominion over us all? Why do you think I hoarded all of those empty books? Why do you think I ensured the ones already filled were brought to that other world, hidden in a place where you - or your son - would find them? Those books need to be unbound, and not just in a such a way that unreliable narrators can insert their own pages. We're all damned by that quill and ink, by the pages bound with the golden threads of Olympus spun from the chains that held Prometheus, the reason we're all damned. Not even The River of Fire could burn the pages your boy left. Perhaps the Olympian Crystal could have taken care of this mess, but, alas, that story took a detour and that book is complete."

"You mean a man got murdered and a portal was opened in Manhattan that's further destabilized the barrier between realms," scoffed Neal. "And you don't sound so concerned. Are you looking to free mortals from the gods' dominion or just destroy reality?"

The old man grinned again. "As I said, my happy ending is not one I'm going to share. You, My Lord, should focus on yours."

"Mine is rather irrelevant considering I'm as trapped as you are. As you so gleefully pointed out."

"Yes, just with more power... or the illusion of it," The Apprentice shrugged.

"I have the power to throw your ass in The Styx," Neal threatened and the man chuckled.

"Oh, if you did, you would have already. No, I think not. Zeus has ordered you to interrogate me, but you can't even touch me let alone toss me in with those Lost Souls," The Apprentice taunted. "That must smart, doesn't it? And all the changes you want to make that are beyond your authority as a mere mortal allowed to play with the gods.

"Take your mother for instance," he continued. "You want to save her and all those poor souls your lover's family got damned in that selfish quest. But you can't. Even if you were allowed to try, do you think you would save them? What have you ever succeeded at, Baelfire? You couldn't save your father. You couldn't save Wendy. You didn't help Emma find her happy ending. You didn't keep your promise to be there for your son. And then you bound yourself to this farce of a purgatory for an impostor."

The Apprentice scoffed at Neal's stony expression. "So don't try to sell me some Candid bullshit, boy, that you made the best of choices in the best of all possible worlds with the hand fate dealt you or that you did anything more than put these cuffs on yourself. You fucked up, you know the world's a worse off place for the mistakes you and your idiot family have made, and there's a better chance of that pirate dying and being resurrected again than you righting all of these wrongs. You're no savior. And you're no god. You're just a dead man who indentured his soul for the wrong woman."

Neal clenched his fists and turned away, heading for the door.

"She'll come for you, Baelfire!" the old man called out after him. "And when she does, it will only bring more misery!"

* * *

It was a chilly fall afternoon in Central Park. The leaves were changing colors and there was a feeling in the air that winter was just around the corner, even if it was officially still a ways off... though a few holiday decorations were already going up here and there.

Steve from Pendant had sent Emma and Henry to the park, specifically to the hansom cab hub where people took rides in white coaches. According to the editor, Neal had driven one and had left his sketch book in the cab one evening when the man and his wife were taking a romantic spin around Central Park. And that was how Neal got hired by his previous employer.

At the line of carriages between 6th and 5th Avenue, Emma asked around. Many of the drivers were new hires since Neal had left, but a few remembered him and eventually an older man pulled his carriage up to let some tourists off and nodded congenially.

"Oh, Neal! Of course I remember him. He had a way with the horses that most of the first-timers don't. He was always friendly. Even offered to return items people left in his carriage on his own time," the man told them. "I remember one time some little girl had left her stuffed... either a bunny or a kitty, I think, and the parents called looking for it. He took the subway all the way to Staton Island after his shift.

"He didn't work here more than six months, though," the man told them. "The thing is... there's a lot of problems here. The city tries to cover it up, but it's in the news now and then that some of the drivers mistreat the horses and there are problems with bike messengers and sometimes even cars hitting them. Neal talked to some reporter and the boss found out and, well, he got fired. He didn't want the fight for the 'whistle blower' protection whatever. And, anyway, some publisher had seen some of his drawings while on a ride, came to see me, and I gave him Neal's phone number, so it worked out, I suppose. Neal got a better paying job, which he deserved. Even if things still aren't much improved around here, to be honest.

"Geronimo," he nodded to the gelding that Henry was petting a short distance away, "collapsed last week and someone caught it on their phone and put it on YouTube. Some of the drivers, they overwork them, get one last fair even if the weather is too hot or too cold."

"Geronimo... Neal's horse?" Emma guessed and the man laughed at that.

"You knew him well, then. He said it had to be a sign when he was assigned that old horse, though he never said what about the name made him think that."

"We... were together over a decade ago, on the west coast," Emma explained, "and had a son, though we had split up and I never found him to tell since I'd given Henry up for adoption. Henry tracked me down a few years ago..."

"And you're looking for his father," nodded the man. "Well, I wish I could help. His phone number and address aren't current anymore. I tried looking him up myself after he stopped walking through the park on his way to work. It's been a few years now. I assumed he got transferred out of state. Maybe to Boston."

Emma couldn't bring herself to tell the man that Neal was dead so she just smiled. "Thanks, anyway. It's nice to hear he was doing something good... and that made him happy. He was a good guy... even if things didn't work out."

"That he was. Hey," the man told her and amended, "I have some of his drawings if you're interested?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

"Should be in the club house," he said and Emma followed to the door. After a minute or two the cabbie came out of the office with some large sketches of Central Park and the carriages and a handful of sketch pad pages and that had been ripped out of their spiral binding.

"I recognized you right away," he said, handing over the ripped pages. "Emma, isn't it? He mentioned you a few times. The love of his life that got away."

They were all renditions of her, Emma realized. Her back in Portland but also scenes from Neal's imagination. Some of them featured self-portraits of Neal, the two of them together. There was even one she recognized as a version of the large charcoal drawing in his apartment, but not in silhouette.

"Neal was usually in a good mood. I mean, no one in New York is ever cheerful exactly," chuffed the old man, "but one day on his way to work he just ripped all these out, tossed them in the trash. I happened to be on my route, so I retrieved them. He didn't notice, but I thought next time he came by I'd see if he wanted them back. Impulsive things like that, you often regret them, you know? But that was the last time I saw Neal."

Emma took the sketches while fighting tears. "Thank you."

"Love's a bitch sometimes, you know," the old man told her sadly. "But maybe it's not too late?"

"Yeah," Emma nodded back, even though it was too late. Looking over at Henry petting the horse, she asked, "How much for a ride with Geronimo?"

* * *

Neal forced himself not to dwell on the old geezer's words as he returned to the Library. He focused on completing his tasks for the day and then headed out, taking his usual route through the park which was devoid of the horse carriages, paddle boats, and other entertainment.

Arthur wasn't on his bench, probably off ranting to some newcomers that he was the rightful King, and the subway was mostly deserted, few souls venturing underground - probably because Arthur had spread a rumor that Cerberus lived down here.

Neal didn't bother with any music for the trip, as music just made everything seem even more depressing. He'd come across a guy in a burned out cab once playing "Only You" and that had kind of been the end of music for him in The Underworld.

Back at his apartment, Neal pulled out leftover Chinese and listened to rain starting to fall - which would have everyone huddled inside in terror thanks to Hades. Neal liked the rain, the soothing staccato rhythm against the windows, rare as it was here.

With a sigh, he gave into temptation and pulled from his messenger bag the crystal ball. He'd taken it from the Dark Castle on his and Belle's quest and replicas of his belongings had come with him to The Underworld. It was how he'd been able to watch Emma and Henry, hard as it was. It was how he'd learned about Emma becoming the Dark One and her quest to save Hook.

And how he'd discovered that he'd been screwed again. Of course.

Touching his fingers to the base, Neal concentrated on Emma and it didn't take long for the mist to clear and reveal - his apartment.

His throat closed up watching her and Henry - he'd grown so much - pulling slices of pizza from a box on his kitchen table.

"I miss you," Neal sighed. "But don't come for me."

* * *

After hanging Neal's damaged dreamcatcher in the window, Emma thought the way the sunset scattered through the webbing seemed almost magical, even if the keepsake itself was melted and mangled and it no longer had any magic of its own thanks to her sister.

But there was no magic anywhere that could bring Neal back to her. All she had were stories other people had told and regrets that she never took the time to hear them from Neal, to find out what he'd done with his life after leaving her.

In her anger, of course, she'd assumed he did selfish things, never thinking of her. By the time she realized that probably wasn't true he was gone, taken first by that bullet, then Pan's curse, then the Vault of the Dark One. She knew now that he'd lived in this crappy apartment because he used most of the money he made to pay back the people he'd stolen from, including that jewelry store, even though insurance must have covered it anyway.

While she was still stealing and living out of a car, he was teaching night school math classes to immigrants. While she was doing a job offered as an ultimatum to jail time and pretending it made her good and important he was helping runaway and foster kids at one of those after school programs. There was some vindication now in knowing her lapses in morality were the result of her sister fighting to get out, but it was hard to just let go of the guilt for the people who got hurt whenever she went into selfish bitch mode - or abandon the anger for how her own paths in life, the choices she could have made to be a good mother, hold a steady job, be someone she was proud of, were every time undermined by feelings and intentions that weren't really hers.

Which included that never had coffee date with Neal. And trying anything to save him that day in the forest. Not to mention that time travel fuckery that was entirely her sister and had probably screwed up all kinds of things in the past thirty-odd years that no one would even remember had been changed for the worse.

Well, maybe Neal would, wherever he was, but that where was beyond reaching and all Emma could hope was that he was looking down on her somehow, that he knew she hadn't forsaken him and would have done anything she could to change her sister's selfish actions. That she was going to do her best to keep her promise and raise Henry up right, no matter how hard it would be to deprogram the kid of all the ass-backward and just plain nonsensical brand of "ethics" and "justice" that filled his books, that was either a reflection of a messed up world, a symptom of it, or had actually contributed over the years with those shady, selfish Authors- and yes, she included Walt Fucking Disney and his frozen head who turned a job into his own lucrative billion dollar empire and instead of trying to inject some of the few "progressive" bits in the real histories where women were stronger, where there was racial diversity, he went for the same dress and pearls white supremacy bullshit that seemed to, no matter how much it unnerved Emma to think it, define how her parents and their friends viewed their reality.

Had Disney made things worse?

Either way, Emma was going to make sure Henry didn't turn out like that. Or like Isaac. He was going to write things they way people really were, not some idealized, misogynist, racist version where only certain people's stories mattered. Or maybe she'd get him to burn that damn book, to break that quill again, because the kid was right before Cruella messed with his head: no one should have that kind of power. Because it wasn't just writing history. There had to be some kind of feedback loop with that magic for the books to have mattered at all in breaking the Dark Curse. And being at the mercy of magic like that, it made Emma seriously fucking uncomfortable. Her sister might be totally cool with it - and probably pissed that Emma got all the magic powers - but she wasn't, and she was going to do something about it!

She just had to figure out how to reconnect with Henry first.

It felt sort of like the first time all over again. Only this time she'd known Henry, he wasn't just a faceless crying baby. This time she had concrete regrets and pain for the things she'd missed while standing right there. She had her sister's memories the same way her sister had hers, but where that bitch was an oblivious tramp where Henry was concerned, Emma could look back and see her son's confusion and feelings of isolation and betrayal as his "mother" repeatedly chose her lover over him, never bothered to talk to him about the possibility she was dying, never asked if he was okay with that douchebag pirate moving into her house let alone marrying her.

The list went on and on, including all that "Dark Swan" bullshit, and Emma had no idea how to make up for stuff that wasn't her doing or just... pick up where she left off with Henry, because he'd grown up while she was just an unwilling passenger in her sister's story, a mostly useless conscience battered by the Dark One into being nearly ineffectual and nowhere near as influential on her sister's emotionally-driven decisions as her sister had been on Emma's all those years when they held opposite roles.

It was kind of demoralizing to know she was that useless as a savior that she couldn't even really help her sister. Maybe keep her from committing cold-blooded murder, but not covering it up. Not ripping out a girl's heart or brainwashing her son so that he looked at Neal's dreamcatcher like it was made by a giant poisons spider that was going to attack him in his sleep.

There was malice aforethought in all of those actions for the years she was trapped, for the quasi-conscious part of Emma that had continued to fight against her selfish actions. Snow White could delude herself to feel better about her own selfish choices, to pretend like she didn't have an imperfectly dangerous child, but Emma had shared a heart with her twin her entire life, and she knew there was no empathy, no compassion there - because that was all _her_.

"... so I was thinking we could hang Dad's drawings at Grandma and Grandpa's until you get a place and - Mom, you okay?"

Emma shook off her wayward thoughts and nodded, grabbing a slice for her plate. "Yeah, fine. Still figuring out this whole 'free of my parasitic twin' plus 'having my own darkness' stuff. It's... weird looking back at my life and decisions I made and now knowing someone else was influencing them, usually not in a good way."

"Like giving me up," Henry grimaced and Emma sat down.

"Yeah, like that."

"Pan would have come after me, though, so it worked out," shrugged Henry.

"Maybe," Emma agreed, "but I'd rather have the real memories of raising you than the fake ones Regina gave me. I know nothing can change that, though. And I know she's your mother, in a lot of ways more than I can ever be. What you had with her was real, what we had was lies..."

Henry set his pizza down and shook his head. "That's not true. You're both my moms. And even if those memories weren't real, they were happy, which I didn't have for real with Regina. And I know that's why she did it, to make up for it, but it still counts as ours, Mom." He frowned, considering, "I just wish Dad could have been part of that too."

Emma sighed. "Me too, Henry. I wish... I wish I had been able to find a way to bring him with us. Maybe everything would have been different then. I didn't even take the time to think about it. My sister-"

"Was too busy flirting with Hook to let you?" Henry snorted.

"And I was too scared to try, to even admit that I'd gotten my hopes up, let myself consider giving it another go with your dad only to have that blow up again like the universe didn't want us to, so I didn't try to fight against that feeling," Emma explained regretfully. "A real savior, a real hero, would have fought for that, for her own kid's happy ending. For hers. Maybe not as blindly and selfishly as my sister did, but I still screwed up and now there's always going to be this... emptiness in our family," she concluded with a sad look at the empty chair across from her, where Neal had sat the night they reunited picking at left over Chinese while she tried to convince Henry to go back to the hotel with her and Gold.

"It wasn't your fault," Henry insisted and scowled. "It was Pan and Zelena and your sister _who wanted you to be selfish_. And Grandma and Gramps for not helping Dad get back to us. I don't get how they could do that. And Dad still helped them, even when he had to know that meant he'd die sooner once he got split from his dad. That's what real heroes do. He just got stuck with a crappy destiny."

"Yeah," Emma agreed while silently wondering, and how had they repaid that sacrifice? Zelena was still alive, raising a kid after getting another father murdered, they all avoided Rumplestiltskin like the Plague, essentially having excommunicated him from the family before Neal's body was even cold and weren't much kinder to Belle either, having let that relationship turn into a gruesome highway accident of back-stabbing, hypocrisy, selfishness, and stupidity - with a kid stuck in the middle. Sure, they gathered for a post-battle meal - a seriously tacky one designed as awfully as the wedding by Emma's mother - and holiday meals sometimes, but it was a lie that the two sides of their family got along. It seemed often like her parents would have much preferred if Hook was Henry's biological father just so they could cut Gold and Belle out of it completely without any feeling of remorse. She really didn't understand her parents at all... and it didn't seem like they understood her either.

Emma picked up her soda cup. "To crappy destinies," she mock toasted. "Seems to run in the family."

They ate in silence aside from the rain that had started to fall. Henry eventually excused himself to use the bathroom and Emma took the dishes to the sink.

Feeling rather miserable, Emma touched the keychain at her throat, wondering when the empty feeling, the guilt and regret would go away -then realizing given the gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach she still had for giving up her kid, it probably never completely would.

Emma let out a sigh and dried her hands. At least she didn't have a pair of ugly-ass blood diamond rings paid for with doubloons traded for things stolen from murder victims.

It really wasn't fair, she lamented, fighting tears. She was the one who suffered through a shitty childhood, who had first love taken away from her and had to give up her kid because of a stupid destiny! Neal was the one who tried and tried and tried to help others while always getting a raw deal for his selflessness. Why did they get fucked over while her selfish bitch sister and her rapist lover got the epic true love romance and adventures and a happily ever after that they didn't even have the emotional capacity to appreciate? Had she run over a cart of nuns in a past life or something? Was being a savior really a curse and she was doomed even now when her duty was done? Or was she being punished because she wasn't able to fulfill her destiny on her own? Or for the loophole that let her survive? If she hadn't, if she had died the way saviors were supposed to, would she have been reunited with Neal? Would she ever see him again one day?

"I'm sorry, Neal," Emma choked out. "I'm sorry loving me ruined your happy ending."

There was a knock on the front door.

* * *

AN: Neal using the crystal ball to watch Emma and Henry: sweet or Hook-like creepy? The show introducing the Shears of Destiny as a big horrible deception between Hook and Emma being turned into more Evil Rumple plotting: surprise or saw it coming a nautical mile away?

Next up: Another quest begins.


	10. Change of Plans

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Warning: References to Golden Queen, so keep those barf bags ready!**

* * *

CHAPTER TEN

CHANGE OF PLANS

Emma opened the door find her sister standing in the doorway in _her_ red jacket and jeans and afforded the ponytailed blonde with a glare. Of course, she'd paired it with some ugly-as-fuck lacy blouse, the kind of crap Mary Margaret used to wear but probably ten times as expensive.

"Seriously?" Emma snapped. "I can't even take a trip without you showing up to ruin it?"

"Nice to see you too, Sis," her mirror image in leather and jeans retorted. "Rocking the jailbird stripes and tights again, huh? Between your throwback grunge look and impersonating a dead woman's fashion sense, you have some messed up nostalgia."

"Says the woman wearing my 'messed up' wardrobe with a fancy-ass blouse that cost two paychecks," Emma scoffed. "What happened to pushing back and _changing who you are_? You're your own woman now, _Sis_. No annoying Conscience Emma to nag you to not be a total bitch all the time or interfering with your haute catoure sensibilities."

"What can I say? Killian likes the leather jackets with just a _touch_ of my high fashion sense feminine side. Something you don't have - fashion sense or femininity," her sister shrugged and Emma glowered.

"I don't want what your nasty-ass _husband_ \- who wore the same clothes for three hundred years and drunk raped women and wore funeral clothes to your wedding - considers fashion or a 'feminine side'. I'd rather have K-Mart clothes and self-respect than anything to do with _a cheap rum stinking pussy grabber_."

"Oi, again with the personal insults!" Hook suddenly interjected from the stairs, but then afforded Emma a flirty look as he reached the hallway and quipped, "But don't pretend you didn't want me to grab your pu-"

Emma _grabbed_ a letter opener from the shelf by the pocket watches and shoved the pirate against the hallway opposite the door, the blade against his throat. "Remember the first time we were in this position? If you insist on a next time, it'll be with my father's sword, about three feet lower, and you'll get more than a nick."

"Pity you rejected my charms and all the happiness it could have brought."

Emma shoved the pirate away. "If by charms you mean 'rape threats' and my happiness you mean 'getting a shit-ton of STDs', then yeah, such a pity."

Hook scowled and rubbed his throat as Emma turned at the sound of footsteps... that belonged to her parents, Regina, and even Belle who crowded into the hallway, all of them coughing and gagging.

"Who keeps a stink bomb in their purse!?" Regina was complaining.

"It was meant for your house before you dragged me on this stupid trip!" snapped Zelena, last to appear on the landing while tugging at the anti-magic cuff she'd been shackled with again. "Why couldn't I have stayed home?"

"Because you deserve to be miserable and the people of Storybrooke don't," Belle told the former Wicked Witch while spraying cherry Binaca around the hallway.

"Oh, please, like you care about them," scoffed Zelena, making for the apartment's open doorway.

"Oh, HELL NO!" Emma held out her hands. "You are not coming in this apartment. _Neither are either of you!_ " she directed at Hook and her sister. "I don't care if Storybrooke fell into a giant sinkhole!"

"But I have to use the toilet!" Zelena complained. "I'm going to get a UTI!"

"Burning when you urinate is the least you deserve," Emma told her. "Maybe it will even turn into a kidney infection, in which case, can you _really_ count on your sister to donate?"

"You're horrible. I like your sister better," harumphed Zelena.

"The feeling is mutual!"

"Mom?" Henry called from the apartment and Hook pushed his way past in the distraction after which Emma gave up and let the hoard in. "What's going on? Why are they here?"

"I don't know. And I don't really care," Emma said and glared as Hook flopped back on Neal's bed. "Get up!"

Rolling his eyes, Hook argued, "Worried I'm going to add my cooties to Robin's forest hobo lice and Zelena's Monkey Herpes?"

"I do not have Monkey Herpes!" Zelena growled, exiting the bathroom. "But you do have syphilis and I'm sure you had more crabs than all the Flying Monkeys combined before Dr. Whale had you deloused like a prison inmate before letting you in one of his beds. Nurse Ratched has pictures, you know. I've never seen an arse that white!"

Hook glared.

Zelena smirked.

Simultaneous to this conversation, Regina was scolding Henry, "I left a dozen messages. You could have answered your phone."

Henry pulled his phone out of his jacket on the couch and winced, "Oops. I still have it set on 'school'."

"Shocking Henry even has that setting since you never made him go to school," Emma directed at her sister.

"Yeah, that's all on me. Not his other mother. Or his _teacher_ who also ditched to basically walk around town with her bow and arrow without notice," Emma's sister drawled. "Remember when Mom realized that between everyone else's magical powers and her postpartum fat ass she was kind of useless at that, but instead of taking care of our woefully neglected brother she decided that she suddenly loved teaching, only without being cursed she was a terrible teacher and the kids wanted jackshit to do with her lousy lectures so she had to get tutored on how to be the fairy tale version of a teacher in one of those inner city youth inspiration movies by _Princess Jasmine_? Which is funny because she was teaching a bunch of spoiled, snotty, royal shits that she _should_ have been able to connect with from personal experience."

"Hey," Snow pointed at her daughter, "you don't get to judge me. This 'fat ass' brought you into the world and I wouldn't have had to patrol the town if you hadn't screwed up the past and brought back the crazy witch who made the time spell and whose too-powerful unstable portals keep bringing evil people here. And maybe I wouldn't have needed help from Jasmine if my daughter had come over, but you even had your father come to your place so you could mooch pancakes off of him before spending tax payer money making out with your boyfriend so David had to pull double duty and be exhausted all the time!"

"You let me get away with that!" the bitchy blonde shot back. "And it was only so I wouldn't have to eat Killian's nasty grapefruit and mackerel shit!"

"What!?" Hook sputtered. "You said you liked my pirate breakfasts!"

"Well, I _lied_ ," she told him. "I'm _evil_. I do that. And you lie to me at least once a day and I pretend not to notice cause I honestly don't give two shits as long as you drink some rum to get rid of your fish breath stank but not enough to turn into a fat old boozer with a limp dick. Get over it."

To her mother she said, "And don't try to pull the wounded mother card! It was only Dad who cared that I wasn't hanging around for family fun time. You liked me copy-catting your romance, like it was some super legitimization that you and Dad are the epitome of true lovedom and all humanoid kind should emulate your perfect vanilla missionary sex 'I will always find you' wholesomeness."

"Excuse me!?" Snow scoffed. "Not that it's any of your business, but we do not have vanilla-"

"You kind of do," Belle interrupted. "I used Rumple's crystal ball once to look in on your apartment to see if I'd left my scarf after baby-sitting and you two were going at it and it was like watching British porn. I mean, I wasn't expecting a sex swing like those two perverts have," she gestured at the leather-clad couple, which earned disgusted looks all around, "but, I don't know, maybe a little ass play. I know if motherhood had given me an ass like that, I wouldn't be wearing mom jeans."

"These are _not_ mom jeans!" Snow hissed. "And at least I'm having sex in a healthy, committed relationship instead of whatever that hot codependent mess is you and Gold are trapped in that involves him sleeping with the phantasmic pure evil version of the woman who held you prisoner for years and stole your heart and wiped your memory that time after you cheated on him with a married man!"

"Says the woman who banged a married man," scoffed Belle.

"I WAS CURSED!"

Zelena repeated in a nasally baby voice, "I was cursed!" She rolled her eyes. "You're boring. Everyone thinks so."

To Belle she amended, "And we're all tired of your self-righteous, hypocritical trainwreck of a marriage. And you wonder why we never want to bring you along on these trips!"

"I had a medical condition that compromised my judgment," Belle defended, crossing her arms.

"And I have a magical condition that compromises my giving a shit about anyone but my child," Zelena shot back, adding, "and occasionally my sister when she's not being a humorless bitch who's still not over the whole thing where I slept with her man... and I don't mean the forest hobo."

"He is not your man, you Electra-Complex-Having cunt!" Belle spat.

"And that I ever thought I wanted him to be mine," shuddered Regina, directing at Zelena, "is not a hilarious little sibling prank, especially when you didn't know I'd end up split in two! You wanted me to have sex with Rumplestiltskin!"

"Well, you kicked me out of your house. Which was mean," Zelena scowled. "And it wouldn't have worked so well if your evil side didn't have the same sort of sexual tension with _his_ evil side as our mother."

"Sounds legitimate," nodded Hook, "and rather insesty, luv. And I married a woman I believed was my stepson's baby mama. Who'd have thought you would be an even nastier sex pervert than little old me?"

" _Shut up_ ," Regina snapped at him, "or I'll take that hook and shove it-"

"Oh, leave my man alone!" Emma's less stable half defended. "You're never going to live down your creepy surrogate daddy sex whether Zelena was pranking you or not. Even my mother thinks that's sick, and she totally supported her grandson's step-grandpa trying to shag her daughter a week after the kid's dad kicked it and marrying her a week after finding out he brutally murdered her father-in-law."

That drew a scowl from Emma at both her sister and her mother who glared at the currently mouthy one and warned, "You are not helping by bringing up-"

"What? The truth?" the nastier blonde scoffed. "Can't handle it coming from your even-more-damaged-than-previously-thought kid? That's right, because I'm the 'Evil Twin' who can't ever be saved from my imperfections by true love and homemaking and bullshit justifications for why lying is another way of saying 'I love you' and you can lie until you're blue in the face that this doesn't change anything between us, but everyone knows you're disgusted that you sacrificed every single one of your morals on the alter of parental guilt to secure whatever your damaged little princess' heart desired - and you did it all for an impostor while the kid you shoved in that wardrobe hates you so much for failing her again and again and again that she ran off in the middle of the night to surround herself with the fragmented remains of the true love you helped walk to his death by deciding wash your hands of your firstborn and focus on getting pregnant with your replacement baby.

"Zelena's right! You're a hypocritical, self-centered bi-"

"Watch it!" Snow snapped loudly and at her wit's end which brought out her rarely-used violent-tempered bitch side that had been mostly suppressed since that first return trip to The Enchanted Forest.

"I have _had it_!" the princess-turned-quasi-queen-turned-school-teacher growled, getting in her daughter's face. "You are _not_ too old for me to ground you! _I am your mother_. I ruined your life by accident but I _will_ ruin it _on purpose_ if you keep up this whiny little bitch act you've been pulling since Boston. You started this mess. And if finishing it means _me_ dragging _your_ ungrateful butt to Hell this time, _Anna Evalyn Nolan_ , then I will do it, are we clear?"

 _Anna(?)_ growled, crossing her arms to mimmic Emma who inquired, " _Anna Evalyn Nolan_?"

"It's _Jones_ ," the other blonde snapped. "It always was. And I told them," she glared at her parents, "I haven't decided on a name."

"Well, we're your parents and we're deciding for you now," Snow told her coolly. "It's every parent's right to give their child a name they can come to hate. I hated mine. I'm sure your sister wasn't fond of being named after a blanket she was abandoned in. So we're naming you after David's friend from Arendelle, and right now, quite frankly, it's very fitting considering that woman chose the most bloody and violent method to deal with some local thugs she knew nothing about."

"She _also_ turned out to be a rather annoying thug-slaying little twit of a princess," Belle added with a glare at Anna(?) who flipped her off.

"I thought you felt bad for nearly getting her killed?" asked Emma and Belle shrugged.

"I rethought that after getting the list for her wedding registry via wishing star delivery which _strongly suggested_ I get her a pink unicorn. Why would I get her _any_ unicorn? Is she going to keep it in her peasant-labor heated castle so it doesn't turn into a unicorn-cicle in the reindeer stable? I let the whole guilt thing cloud my judgment. That and the brain tumor probably. Bitch is crazy."

"Takes one to know one," snorted Zelena.

Belle snorted right back. "That's not an insult when it was true. _Because I had a brain tumor_. I'm not crazy anymore. You're brain is permanently messed up from your magically degenerate development and your mother's psychopath genes that would have made you evil even without a curse!"

"Yes, well, your mother killed herself and you thought she got eaten by an orge!"

Belle launched herself at Zelena, grabbing the witch's long red hair.

"Um... okay," said Emma, kind of at a loss as the two women tried to cat fight in the small space and no one bothered stopping them. "Because Henry didn't answer his phone you guys came all the way to tell me that my sister maybe has a name while calling each other names like a bunch of cranky five year olds who haven't had nap time?"

"Of course not, that would stupid," Regina sighed. "No one cares what your worse half calls herself. And I don't know what bugs crawled up their butts," she directed at Snow, Belle, Anna(?), and Zelena. "Unfortunately, it was _after you left_ that Anna(?) Skankrenina _Jones_ had either a pang of conscience or some indigestion-"

" _Really_?" Anna(?) interrupted.

"That's actually quite clever, Gina!" Zelena declared after holding off Belle with a broom, then pouted. "Why didn't I think of it?"

"Stop calling the woman I love a skank!" Hook growled.

"I've held my tongue in this stupid name calling war for _eight hours_ aboard your smelly ship," Regina snapped. "She had it coming. And if you bring up my double's indiscretion one more time, so help me-"

" _What_ is going on?" Emma demanded.

David explained, "Your sister decided to have a séance."

"Mom and Dad wouldn't shut up about how my happiness was making you miserable," groaned Anna(?), "and how I owed you and shit for giving me optimism or love-by-proxy or something. I figured it'd get them to shut up and leave me alone if I did something 'nice', whether it worked or not."

"It worked all right," grumbled Hook, rubbing his throat. "Neal got the Green Bitch to strangle me! I'm not the one who killed him!"

"Well he couldn't exactly strangle me unless he wanted to kill off any chance at communicating with his stupid loved ones!" Zelena rolled her eyes.

"Wait," Henry finally rejoined the conversation/bickering, "you mean you guys _talked to my dad_!?"

"Sort of," sighed Snow. "Neal possessed Zelena."

"Who strangled me for putting moves on the wrong woman!" huffed Hook. "You and Baelfire have issues!"

"Seems he lied about moving on and was still in The Underworld," Regina explained, "thanks to Hades _and my sister_."

Zelena rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't pin it on me, Sis! I didn't lock him in Bizarro Granny's motel room! I wasn't even part of that plan to keep all your family members accept the ones Hades wanted you to mess with locked up. It's not like he gave me a list of their names. And it's certainly not my fault _Neal_ found out his plan and warned Emma so he didn't get to make nice with his mommy and move on or that he lied to the Wonder Twins here before apparently making a deal with Zeus to restore Captain Hep C to life. If he was stupid enough to accept eternal misery to offer up his step daddy to his baby mama as her one true love, then the joke is on him."

"You could have told us all after Hades was killed," Regina pointed out while Emma stared, slack-jawed.

"Like I could have told you Hades was lying about that crystal completely destroying good souls," Zelena shrugged. "But I was doing you all a kindness. So _you_ wouldn't get your hopes up and move on and _the rest of us_ wouldn't have to endure Emma guilt-tripping over her baby daddy. Or _all_ of you moping over your dead mommies and daddies you didn't get to hug.

"Anyway, throw in the whole 'restoring a life takes a life' thing what with Sheriff Skanky getting Captain STD back and the universe taking Robin 1.0 to pay the debt, I didn't really like my odds, quite honestly, if Emma decided Henry deserved his daddy back while keeping her leather dildo."

"Damn right you shouldn't like your odds!" Emma seethed and now attacked Zelena far more violently than Belle (or her own attack the other day), throwing her into the lockers, hands around her throat, shocking everyone. "You shouldn't be allowed to live, let alone happily with the child you conceived by raping a man _in this apartment, the apartment of the man you murdered_!"

"Emma-" Regina tried to reason, but magic shoved her back as the blonde violently tried to strangle Zelena, fingers digging into the redhead's throat with obvious fatal intentions.

"Emma, let her go!" Snow pleaded, but Emma wasn't listening.

"You're a fucking psychopath," she continued as Zelena gasped and struggled for air. "And I'm fucking tired of this family giving a million chances to spoiled, childish, deceitful little shits like you who think redemption is having family dinners while not giving a shit about all the people whose lives you've ruined, who can't have family dinners because you wanted to be a fucking princess or a queen or take a spin on the Dark One's dick.

"Maybe I should cast a spell on you _and_ Hook," she continued as Zelena's lips started turning blue, "and have you rape each other. I could throw Regina in too, get a little justice for Graham. _Or_." She moved one hand from Zelena's throat into her chest. "I could just rip out your heart and crush it now."

" _Mom_!" Henry's shout and his hand on her shoulder did snap her out of it and she quickly let Zelena go and stumbled back, sans heart. He then glared at the rest of them. "What's wrong with all of you!? Why do you have to ruin everything!?"

While Henry ran out the window to the fire escape, Emma tried to calm down, torn between going after her son and facing the rest of her family.

Wheezing, Zelena smirked, "Looks like the little ex savior got her dark side back."

"Emma?" Snow gasped.

"She's right," sighed Regina. "Also, language!"

"Yeah, sorry." Emma winced and sagged against the bookshelf and conceded, "Lily was dying. I had to do it. I wanted to do it."

"Oh, sweetheart," Snow gasped and hurried over to hug her. "You could have told us."

"You would have tried to stop me," Emma stated and pulled out of her mother's unwelcome embrace. "If you thought it was a good idea, you would have urged me to take my darkness back when Lily got to town. _And_ when Maleficent ask for your help.

"But you _always_ put yourself before your kids," she accused her mother coldly. "You keep saying you're putting me first, but you're not. You said refusing to help Neal find me and Henry was putting me and my happiness first, but it wasn't. And he died. And you didn't even care. Not really. You made some big bullshit show of naming my brother after him and then practically pushed me into Hook's arms with bridal and baby magazines. It's like you were trying to subliminally get me hitched and knocked up so I guess we could bond over ugly as fuck submissive little princess wedding dresses and morning sickness since you stopped trying to just be my friend the moment you found out I was your daughter!"

Snow's expression fell. "Emma, I _was_ your friend. I do _want_ to be your friend-"

"Why? Because _Anna_ is right that she's a disappointment now?" Emma shook her head. "Mary Margaret was my friend, but you made it clear you don't want to be her anymore. You want to be Snow White who supported Regina having an affair, because screw morality if a fairy said you're soulmates right? You want to be Snow White who decided a man who helped the woman who killed your mother murder hundreds of people and left us for dead and who handed your grandson's father over to a child abuser, who murdered your father-in-law, has to be the one true love soulmate for your perfect little savior princess because of some book rewritten by time getting screwed up said so? And if your daughter's one true love wasn't destined to be a syphilitic manwhore who tagged along on your meet-cute then that means you sent her real true love off to die so he wouldn't get in the way of your do-over!"

"Emma..." Snow gasped.

"I don't want or need your help as my mother or my so-called friend!" Emma snapped. "I don't want someone who thinks the best way to bury her guilt is to orphan her newborn son so the grown daughter she orphaned can retrieve her fuck-boy who wasn't even in danger so they can get engaged over your and your husband's almost-corpses! That's not putting your kids' happiness first, any of them!

"You're shitty parents, both of you!" Emma continued. "You didn't think it was strange at all that I didn't give a shit about Henry when I or _Anna_ or _whatever_ thought the savior thing would kill me?" she demanded. "That 'my' biggest concern was whether or not my new boyfriend would forgive me so I sat there pouting at him while my kid had to get support from a freak'n stranger!? That's _not_ good parenting! Good parenting is putting your kids first, which means making sure they put _their_ kids first, not the person they're sharing a bed with who recently tried to murder your entire family!

"But, hey, that relationship was right up your ally, right?" continued Emma angrily, directed at her mother. "Cause you're a needy mess who can't bare to function on your own _just like her_ who defied all laws of nature to bring back the husband you killed. And why did you do it? To get me to clean up your fucking mess so you could have your happy ending do-over, a mess that maybe wouldn't have even happened if you'd helped Neal instead of telling him to quit messing up your do-over and thrown Zelena in a pit with some rabid Flying Monkeys!"

"I resent that!" the witch huffed.

While Snow and David both looked uncomfortable under Emma's tirade, which wasn't finished.

"You don't get to decide to only help when you feel bad about something you screwed up in the first place!" Emma continued. "And you don't get to tell my sister that she doesn't have to feel bad about shit that is entirely her fault like _everything_ that happened as a result of her blackmailing Gold into dragging everyone to Hell to save her fuckboy pirate! And that _includes_ your stupid tag-team sleeping curse! And then telling Belle and Gold to stop cleaning up their kid's selfish shit or you'll waste his abused-for-his-entire-life ass! That's not being a good parent _or_ a good person! It's sick!

"And how about Dorothy's aunt that's eternally damned because of you? Do you even care? No! Because it doesn't directly effect you! Just like that guy _Dad murdered_ so you could true love finger bang and I assume grow some bullshit tree out of his still-warm corpse!

"And even when it does affect you," Emma continued, "like Hook murdering your father," she directed at David, "you could give two fucks if it happened more than five minutes ago and the homicidal asshole is anyone but Henry's other grandfather!

"You're all a bunch of selfish pricks and hypocrites!": Emma snarled. "And I wish I could have cut out my savior shit just so the lot of you could have fucking fended for yourselves, accept you're not even my real family! You're shitty remakes spawned from that green bitch's spell!" Emma snapped in conclusion before stomping out to the fire escape.

"I wasn't green at the time," Zelena harumphed.

"Wow, didn't think she had it in her," sniggered Anna(?), impressed, "and I might add, if you need dead relatives and mass murdered villages to understand hope, then you're more screwed up than Zelena!"

Snow burst into tears.

"You're being a horrible person, you know," Regina told the blonde while taking a slice of pizza out of the box on the table, "and _I've_ had people mass murdered."

Hook interjected, "And want to shag The Croc-"

Regina slapped the pirate.

"No one said I had to deliver the news pleasantly," shrugged Anna(?), taking the slice of pizza out of her hand. "I did my part. You idiots wanted to tag along and fucked it up. That's on you. She's right. You're not her family. Hers was erased from existence. We might as well just leave her here with her not-really son. I did my part. I get my happy ending and no one gets to tell me to feel guilty about it!"

* * *

Emma ducked under the damaged dreamcatcher and joined Henry who'd obviously been crying and wiped at his wet cheeks with his scarf.

"Hey, Kid, you okay?"

"Not really."

"Yeah, me neither," she sighed. "Our family is kind of fu... er... screwed up."

"Yeah," Henry snorted, "seems like everyone's slept with everyone or had some evil double sleep with someone so they kind of slept with them too and it's all nastier than _Game of Thrones_."

"Yeah, I think this family has a lot of daddy issues," Emma mused, not really intending to segue in that particular manner.

Henry asked, "Did Dad really lie that he was in a good place or did _Aunt Anna_ make that up so he wouldn't mess with her plan?"

Emma grimaced and shrugged. "I guess he did."

"Why? Why would he _do_ that? Didn't he care that I missed him? He was _my_ unfinished business!" Henry cried angrily.

"I'm sure he did, Henry. But he thought... he probably thought he was protecting you from even more pain," Emma told him. "Like I told myself I was protecting you when I said your dad was dead, only _he_ was actually being selfless, because look what ended up happening in The Underworld?"

Henry pondered this before considering, "And he thought you were in love with Hook but you'd try to save him for me and even if it didn't work, if Hook stayed dead too you'd resent me for making you choose between my happiness and yours."

Emma gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Maybe he did. But your happiness is mine, okay? Being a parent is putting your kid's happiness first. That true love trumps all this romance soulmate nonsense, no matter what that book or anyone else from those fairy tale lands say, okay?

"But... yeah... the way my sister was slutting it up for Hook," she sighed, "and lying to you to try saving that messed up romance, I wouldn't be surprised if your dad did think that."

"It's not fair. Zeus tricked him!" Henry growled. "He had to! How would a god not know you had a sister?"

That actually was a good point, Emma realized. Still, though...

"I don't know, Kid," she told him.

Henry sniffed a little and asked something he'd been wondering since his mother mom's dinner but hadn't been able to bring himself to ask, "Do you miss... the other me? I mean... if your parents aren't really your parents... then... I'm not really your son?"

"Hell no," Emma told him fiercely. "You're mine. You just ... you weren't stuck inside a time traveler so you don't remember or something. I don't know. But I came from that other world, so did you. I think there's probably a lot of shitty paradoxes because of Zelena's spell. But you're my son, Henry. You reunited me with my family. It's not your fault that they... that I lost them."

"Maybe you can get them back?" Henry considered. "Maybe... they're not as gone as it seems. Like everyone killed by Fiona's curse was... unkilled after you woke up. You were part of your sister and she was part of you. Maybe they can be... part of themselves? They just don't remember."

"Maybe," Emma tentatively agreed and hugged her son, amending, "We're gonna figure this out, okay? And also find out what happened to your dad."

Henry nodded and smiled a little. "Okay, Mom."

Emma ducked back into the apartment and into a rather depressingly weird scene. Anna(?) and Hook were now making out on Neal's bed, her mother was sniffling over on the couch being comforted by her father. Zelena was mixing drinks while Regina was helping herself to the pizza. Belle had her nose buried in a book she must have had in her oversized handbag, seated as far away from the others as she could get.

It was Regina who awkwardly approached her. "Look, this is screwed up. I'm not going to fight you on your mother's terrible judgment and nonexistent parenting skills or that my sister is a lying bitch and your sister is a selfish slut and I obviously have issues best worked out in therapy, but now isn't the time to throw tantrums and punch people in the face. I know it's not fair, Emma. But I never got closure with Robin. You deserve to have that with Neal. So focus on that. And then if you still want to break some noses... well, I'll at least help ruin the pirate's pretty face."

Emma managed a weak smile at that. "Maybe you're right. I guess I've been accumulating a lot of anger since _Anna_ took over. I'd consider attending Archie's anger management classes, but Leroy would probably punch _me_ in the face for my bitch sister interrupting his sessions... and it's kind of hard to trust a shrink who couldn't tell I had magical multiple personality disorder."

"Well, he did get his degree from a curse," Belle spoke up. "I'd rather take advice from a book by Freud than going to Archie, nice as he is. I'm not even sure he's legally notarized to marry anyone, quite frankly. He said he was when I asked if he knew anyone available to marry me and Rumple, but that online certificate seems rather shady..."

"Better than taking advice from your somehow omniscient two week old zygote with magical dream powers?" Anna(?) called out from the other room. "People with shitty-ass judgment who take charity from multiple people who tried to murder them multiple times to spite their husband in order to spite their husband for lying don't get to cast stones. I mean, shit, are you actually the most evil person in this room or just stupid?"

"BRAIN TUMOR!" Bele shot back, adding, "And I am not taking opinions from the empathy-challenged peanut gallery that includes an idiot who didn't even know he was the freak'n Dark One. And you said you were done being helpful, so _shut up_!"

"So?" Emma asked Belle. "Do you think there's a chance Neal can get out of whatever deal he made? Would Zeus have known he was making a deal for my twin rather than me? Could that be a loophole?"

"It is unlikely Zeus was _unaware_ that you were merged with your sister who was in primary control of your magic and savior duties," Belle answered. "It's a sort of magic that gods are familiar with. In order to maintain human form, for instance, for a period longer than a few hours, gods must find and merge with a human who will, at times, be afforded short periods of dominance to maintain the stability of the connection. And there's speculation that Janus is actually twins, one good, one evil, and was in some way, willingly or not, the progenitor of the mortal curse.

"Of course, in the possession case," Belle continued, "the human eventually becomes aware that something is amiss due to blackouts in memory and that's generally when the merged state has to be terminated or each begins to affect the mental and emotional stability of the other. It's why gods generally don't interact with mortals outside of their own realms."

"Um... right, that makes sense," Emma humored the bookworm. "So, there's a chance I can use what was essentially not disclosing important information to Neal to get him out of whatever deal he's made, right? I mean, that seems like the kind of contract loophole Gold would use."

"Well... I suppose... essentially..." Belle shrugged and told her, "But you have to keep in mind that the gods are almost all selfish, sexist, pan-sexual freaks whose most difficult choices range from which unsuspecting mortal to rape and impregnate to if they have time between plotting to kill each other and attending an orgy to shag both their sister and a horse. I mean, it's not like Zeus pardoning Hook was some sign of his redemption or conflicted with the gods' ethical code in any way. If they even have one it amounts to a reality show of fake alliances and backstopping to get to the top of Mt. Olympus. It's like a big frat house up there, and one of the frat houses that gets charged with fatal hazing and gang rape and banned from campus."

"Sounds about right," agreed Zelena. "I should have known better than to think one midnight bike ride could really result in true love."

"Plus, you and Hades were a couple of psychopaths," snorted Emma with a glance at her sister and the man who - ugh - might become her brother-in-law.

"Magical law doesn't prevent psychopaths from having true love," Zelena stated, amending with a smirk, "Look at Belle and Rumple?"

Belle glared hard. Zelena flipped her off.

"And better a god with a stopped heart," Zelena continued, "than moldy pirate with a syphilis-eaten brain."

Anna(?) scoffed. "I can't believe I hugged you at my wedding."

"I couldn't believe you hugged me either considering I murdered you previous love... though you rather downplayed the 'true love' part in your horrid vows. I just figured you were an emotionally damaged little Stepford Wife who had to find her happy ending laying on her back for a man."

"I tried to put darkness into your kid once," Anna(?) threatened. "I could try it again. Speed up the process of her becoming an irredeemable psychopath!"

"Bitch!"

"Whore!"

Emma chose not to ask what had soured the 'friendship' between the psycho murderer and her emotionally damaged Stepford Wife sister... or between Zelena and Belle. Maybe this family deserved each other after all. Though it made her feel extra angry on Neal's behalf for getting in the middle of their crazy trainwreck.

"Shut up!" Emma snapped at them both. "No one cares about your fake-ass friendship. Is there or is there not a chance to get Neal out of this shitty contract?"

"Maybe," Belle conceded.

"So I just need to go to Olympus and demand that toga-draped bastard void his end of the deal for being a dishonest prick and then Neal gets to go wherever heroes are supposed to go."

"You can't get to Mt. Olympus from here, though," Snow told her, still sniffling. "Only gods can do that. You have to go either to The Underworld or Atlantis-"

"And since you're not a mermaid..." Regina concluded.

"Great. Another trip to Underbrooke. Whatever," shrugged Emma. "How do I do this? Bleed Gold in the town wishing well?"

"A river would be more convent," the Dark One announced himself in the doorway. "And spare us a return trip with _two_ of you."

"Oh, good, you finally showed up, Crocodile," Hook snarked, Anna's(?) bra dangling from his hook. "Can we get on with the damn quest already then? I don't want to miss _Black Sails_. "

* * *

They ended up under the George Washington Bridge after a very weird subway experience. Emma had to resist using magic to make Zelena 'accidentally' fall on the third rail in front of a speeding train. She was pretty sure Regina would have forgiven her eventually. Pushing Anna(?) and Hook as they made out was tempting too, but she wasn't so sure her parents - her sort of parents - would forgive that even after Anna's(?) insults... although, then again, since they forgave Regina for killing their parents and were still helping _her_...

"Look, I know you're still pissed at me," Anna(?) said, catching up with Emma after they had to scare off some junkies. "And I know you're jealous-"

"Jealous?" Emma cut her off with a laugh. " _Pissed_ , yes. Jealous? _Not remotely_. Yeah, I'm pissed off that you had the courage to risk being hurt for love after I fucked up that chance. But the guy you did that for? The relationship you have? I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life than have the abusive shitfest of a marriage that you've got playing husband and wife corrupt cops together. Plus, one of your kids is gonna turn out _evil_ just like you."

Anna(?) glowered. "It's not abusive. Killian has never hit me... well... after we became involved and I wasn't just someone in the way of him getting to Gold and when he hasn't been cursed to be evil. He changed. For love. For me."

Emma scoffed. "No he didn't. He may not hit you, but he manipulates you. He threatened suicide if you left! And he makes sure you believe you're too broken and damaged to ever be wanted by anyone else. _Maybe you are_ , but it's shit to do that to someone, and you don't do it to someone you love! He tries to justify his actions, including lying to you and going against your wishes, to make it seem like your feelings are invalidated by his love meaning he knows better for you than you do, and he uses your weaknesses against you. Makes sure you believe you need his approval for everything. Makes you feel like you have to be _his_ happy ending and that translates to you finding true love. That's manipulative bullshit. _He treats you like property_.

"And don't get me started how he treats Henry!" Emma snapped. "He thought Henry was your kid and his delusional version of 'not destroying another family' completely left out that he played a pretty big role in destroying Henry's family by handing his father over to a child abuser and the moment Neal died, trying to get in my pants! Not destroying another family would have been not trying to murder us all and leaving us the hell alone, not trying to selfishly endear himself to everyone to get the big happy fucking family he did absolutely nothing to deserve! He's a selfish prick with narcissistic personality disorder and you're more damaged and fucked up at accepting what real love is than I am. You should be in therapy! With a shrink whose degree is worth a damn, not some cursed bug who pledged you two assholes to eternal love!"

Shaking her head, Emma told her scowling sister, "I pity you. You're settling for something codependent, something toxic and enabling that's never going to make you a better person."

Anna(?) glared at her. "Yeah, well, you're going to end up alone and know it's your fault that you didn't use your true love powers to save your soulmate."

"You're right. But at least I'll have my self-respect," Emma argued, "and I'll have my memories of what it felt like to really love someone and be loved by someone. My happy ending might not be in this life, but that'll just make me strive harder to be the best person I can so I'll get to spend everything that comes after with my best friend who treated love like a gift you're given by the person you want to be with, who was my best friend instead of a pretty face to cling to who thinks you're the prize he gets to collect for beating the competition by outliving him and managing to go a year without getting a new STD."

Before Anna(?) could consider a response to that, Gold slashed his palm with the dagger and let his blood drip into the water, causing it to glow and a fog to start forming.

Noticing the rest of her family gathering their things, Emma told them bluntly, "Hell no, you're not coming this time."

"But Emma-" David began.

" _No_. I thought I made it clear that the family field trip is what screwed things up last time," Emma cut her father off.

Snow stepped forward and tearfully admitted, "You're right, Emma. Our plans haven't exactly gone... as planned. And you're also right that I failed you as a friend and as a mother... whether you see me as ever having been either."

She sniffed and laid a hand on Emma's shoulder. "I can't go back and undo the spell I had cast on you and your sister. I can't go back and have your father not put you in that wardrobe. And I can't go back and help Neal find you and Henry without losing his life or undo that time spell to bring the world you remember back. But I can help you see Neal again, even if it's only to help him move on," she pleaded.

"You want to feel better about screwing up," sighed Emma. "I get that. And I'm sorry... I'm sorry things between us aren't better... Mom," she managed, which drew a small, hopeful look from the other woman. "But that I don't know how to fix that. I think we just want different things in this life. And coming with me won't change any of that. It didn't last time. And the last thing I need is King Arthur of Douchedom deciding to rekindle some old grudge.

"Giving that creep control of The Underworld has to be one the worst ideas anyone's had in the history of ideas," she directed at Hook who rolled his eyes.

Snow nodded sadly. "I really am sorry, sweetheart. For everything. I really do just want to help you find happiness."

"I know. It's just not the same as your happiness and I have to find it on my own," Emma told her.

Henry tried, "Mom, I wanna come too. I can help."

"I know, but you can't. You need to stay here and far away from Cruella," Emma countered. "I know you want to be part of every adventure, Henry, and I know you want to see your dad _\- I wish you could_ \- but adventures don't make someone a hero, and a lot of the legends in that book are phonies anyway. Staying safe is what your dad would want. _Promise me_ you won't try anything."

Grudgingly, Henry agreed, "Okay, I promise."

Emma hugged him tightly, reminded again how much he hugged like Neal.

"Tell Dad I love him," Henry demanded.

"Of course I will," Emma promised and kissed him on the forehead.

The bridge was now completely swallowed up from view by the fog and there was a strengthening tinge in the air that Emma recognized as magic, and further recognized as the unsettlingly morbid kind from the last time the ferryman had been summoned.

"You realize," Gold told her as she joined him once more, "that there's no guarantee Zeus will agree to break the deal without making another."

"I know."

Gold sighed. "Bae would have said I was a good father until I took on this curse, but I was always too frightened. Belle is at least right about that. Everything terrified me, most of all being powerless to protect him from the dangerous world that twice nearly ended his life. I was so afraid of losing him that that fear became a self-fulfilling prophesy, one I have found myself repeating."

Grimacing, Emma admitted, "And I was so afraid of letting myself fall in love with him again, of admitting how I felt and losing that dream again, that I didn't try to save him with my savior powers - or true love and I couldn't fight my sister enough to fix anything after I lost control of those powers. By the time of that stupid battle with your mother... all I could offer was my heart and a song that she didn't even sing right so it wasn't enough to stop the curse. I was still afraid. But I won't let that fear control me. Not this time."

"It will be harder with darkness tempting your heart, even if it isn't the thrall of the Dark One or even what you experienced with your sister," Gold cautioned and nodded as the familiar old boat's bow cut through the fog. "Just try to do right by my boy. He deserves that much after everything."

"You have my word. You're still family, even if you're a total scumbag most of the time."

With that, Emma stepped into the boat and took a seat on one of the warn benches. The fog closed in and it was just her and the silent cloaked ferryman guiding the boat through the dizzying, disorienting mist.

* * *

AN: I don't even know where or how to explain Regina and Gold suddenly having "chemistry" since that would have had to start WAY before Emma fucked up the timeline in canon. How is that a thing with zero previous indication!? Ugh! At least in This Side of Paradise it could be those stupid flowers messing with both memories and hormones. Still, though, GROSS! And as you can probably tell, I pretty much loathe the character Belle has become. At this point, Emma, Regina, Henry, and Neal are really the only sympathetic characters in this story and the rest as are more in line with their canon characters: complete assholes incapable of self-reflection and accountability. Emma's family has basically been reduced to the cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Other than Anna(?), I'm not sure if any of them will manage any character growth by the end of this story, though I would like to try to reconcile Snowing and their daughters and have Belle get a clue that ever since marrying Rumple she's turned into a selfish, backstabbing cunt. Also, a footnote: Emma's rant to Anna about her abusive relationship is partly from a screencap of tweets #HeMayNotHitYou that made the round in the ACS tag. /TheRealMissAbbs/status/731543237954011136

Next up: Hitchhiking in The Underworld, where the usual tropes are flipped!


	11. Hell on The Hudson

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HELL ON THE HUDSON

Last time she was headed to The Underworld, Emma was pulled into a vision with her sister. This time there was no sudden awakening in a broken-down amusement park, though. Instead time passed simply passed and then the fog parted, revealing a reddish sky and a familiar but broken bridge, its middle span collapsed into the water.

Emma turned back to the ferryman for answers, but he merely pointed a pale finger to the shore, to the likeness of the spot she just stepped off from, and the moment she did was vanishing into the fog again.

Far more uncertain than she'd been when she got into the boat, Emma made her way up to the road and walked until she found the first evidence of any inhabitants: a fire-damaged cab, the doors missing. It had the key in the ignition and started when she turned it, as did the CD player which began to play a scratchy rendition of "Only You".

That was more than a little unsettling.

Emma got out of the cab and continued on foot through deserted neighborhoods. She found an abandoned bicycle after awhile and peddled her way past graffiti-covered tenements to the first subway station she could find, but after ten minutes of waiting no train came.

"Train doesn't run here anymore," explained a woman in rags with a cat in her lap.

Frowning, Emma asked, "Then why are you waiting here?"

"Wasn't waiting. Came out of the rain. Has it stopped?"

"It rains in The Underworld?"

"Of course it does," the woman told her. "Are you new here? Hades made it rain whenever he was angry. Poor souls got melted away down the storm drains! Arthur seemed nicer, but..."

The cat jumped from her arms and bounded toward the stairs.

"Stanley! Not so fast! Wait for mummy!"

By the time Emma had followed the crazy cat lady back up to the surface, said lady and her cat were riding away on the bike she'd left propped against the railing.

"Damn it," Emma grumbled and continued to walk, wishing she'd switched her boots for tennis shoes.

It felt like she'd been walking forever while the sky never reflected a change. Only the ruins of landmarks suggesting the distance she'd traveled.

The site of a broken Yankee Stadium reminded that she'd been planning to take Henry to a game before Storybrooke had sucked them back in. That causeway was broken like the bridge, she noticed, this faux Manhattan clearly isolated from the rest of faux New York as she supposed Underbrooke had nothing but the illusion of horizon and trees at the borders to replace big black nothingness.

A car engine suddenly cut through the eerie silence, and soon a familiar roadster appeared, growling around a turn.

The car passed her by, then stopped, backed up, and the window rolled down.

"Don't tell me you went through all that trouble to save your pirate only to get snuffed, darling!"

Emma sighed. "That was my evil twin sister Anna."

"Really? I'm quite sure she went by 'Emma'."

"She's trying out the name. It's a long and annoying story."

Cruella shrugged. "Well, it's a long and annoying drive back to midtown with all the potholes in this life-foresaken city. I've a craving for Papaya King. Hop in, darling!"

Leery as she was, Emma's feet were killing her - bad choice of words, maybe - so she walked around and got into the passenger seat.

Gunning the engine, Cruella prompted, "So, tell me the long and annoying story of this evil twin, darling!"

* * *

Emma had finished the story by the time Cruella pulled up to Papaya King. The famous restaurant was pretty dilapidated looking and the prices were higher -just like Granny's in Underbrooke - but it was also still popular, people gathered at the tables eating hot dogs and drinking fruit juice.

"Afternoon, Madam Mayor," the Blind Witch greeted.

" _Mayor_?" Emma sputtered.

"It's not like Zeus was going to pull Cora back from her great hereafter to resume her position," Cruella retorted. "Not the promotion I was looking for, but it has its perks. Like not sleeping on park benches and getting to shag my favorite purveyors of alcohol and snacks."

"Told you, I don't swing that way," sighed the witch.

"Pity. Two hot-dogs," Cruella ordered, "two beverages. Grape and...?"

"Um... lemonade, I guess," Emma shrugged.

"Hmm," the Blind Witch behind the counter remarked, "I took you for a piña colada girl. _Maybe banana daiquir_ i"

"Sadly, this isn't my rum-chugging murderer," sighed Cruella, pulling out a bottle booze to add to her grape soda. "She's got an Evil Twin, the bona fide cursed sort, who was impersonating her last time around for some annoying magical reason related to Hades' nutter girlfriend. I suppose I should have considered after shagging her clearly evil uncle."

"So did she kill you then?" the Blind Witch asked Emma. "I hear Evil Twins tend to do that to their better halves. Usually in the womb, but your uncle did give it a go after death, so..."

"No. I'm here for my true love," Emma replied and the witch groaned. "She is a nasty bitch though."

"So, Good and Evil, both of 'em have true love on the brain. One's a nasty bitch. The other... is Supergirl in disguise?" the witch said of her glasses. "Well, good luck with that, honey. The Lord of The Underworld isn't one for making deals."

"I was hoping to get an audience with Zeus," said Emma. "My mother was friends with Hercules."

"And I bought an apple off of Aphrodite from Hera's fancy garden once," shrugged the Blind Witch, "but that hasn't gotten me an audience with anyone in a toga since I got here. Not that I want one, unless it comes with a pardon. And maybe an orgy."

"Murdering and eating children isn't an easy slate to clean," snorted Cruella.

"And killing your parents and skinning puppy dogs is?"

"Obviously not or I wouldn't have been trying to get myself written back to life, darling. So long as this place exists, bound to the whims of the gods and their laws of judgment, we're screwed. Best to enjoy purgatory and stay away from any ferry docks."

"Cora, the Queen of Hearts, was redeemed," Emma pointed out. "That must count for something."

Cruella snorted. "Oh, is that what you all think? How amusing! No, no, that pretty white light and vision of happiness when someone decides to move on is just a mirage that Hades cooked up. You know, a prank on the damned to eternal torture and misery for being despicable human beings who raped and mass murdered and used magic in unnatural ways. Hugging it out with equally repulsive relatives whose lives they ruined who then went on to ruin other lives isn't redemption, darling, it's just a sad, pathetic last attempt to avoid the inevitable. Whether Cora knew what she was getting and wanted to leave her brats thinking she was with the Angels? That I can't say. But that she's pushing a millstone for eternity with not a manicurist around I most certainly can."

"Yep," nodded the Blind Witch. "Queen Heartless is toiling in the fiery pits of Tartarus, which is essentially Hell, from what King Artie gossiped of his Big Book of Dead People Legal Stuff. Well, technically, like Cruella said, she's pushing a millstone twenty-four seven, so I guess Zeus held to his brother's recommended punishment for that back-stabbing cunt. She got me addicted to evil _and_ sweets, you know? I went blind from diabetes!"

"Yes, just tragic," drawled Cruella.

"A real shame about the pirate's hot brother, though," she sighed. "He was sexy _and_ a mass murder. I heard he's being drown over and over by demons wearing the faces of the sailors he murdered and their families."

"Oh, please," Cruella sighed. "Liam was never going to sleep with you. He was _gay_."

"What... really?"

"I caught him going at it with James once," she shrugged, "but couldn't convince him to a three-way. And I think he pleaded out of that sentence to be some also damned ancestors buttplug or something."

Emma sipped her lemonade to avoid that topic. It was a relief, honesty. Cora was a psychotic bitch even with her heart. Liam was a self-absorbed dick who tried to use his murder victims to con his brother... twice, apparently.

The Blind Witch recalled, "You know, I think I remember hearing Regina's father faired better..."

"Oh, yes, him," Cruella nodded. "He was given probation, sentenced to indentured servitude in the household of the man he conspired to kill."

"That's right. Regina's husband, Snow White's father, who was also Regina's mother's chaste fiancé that Snow White's mother framed for theft and had publicly slut-shamed and exiled to an even poorer kingdom where she gave birth to her rape baby and left it in the woods to grow up into a psychotic rapist before she banged the Dark One whom later both of her daughters also bedded, one by sexual assault, and one by some weird split-personality phantasm that had lost all inhibitions against taking a spin on the dick of a guy she thought of like a father because of some prank the green was pulling," the Blind Witch recalled.

" _Man_ I wonder if the Titans are using Queen Eva and Cora to torture _each other_ ," she continued, "like Eva's attached to the millstone but can't die, obviously, and probably just insults Cora while being trotted! And then they both have to watch Regina in her glittery get-up and Rumplestiltskin get busy like a couple of skanks."

"Probably," shrugged Cruella. "Though it's less traumatizing than Belle's sex dreams about her own progeny. I did _not_ need to conference in on that call from her poor sweet mum."

"Wait, my grandmother is in Hell?" gasped Emma. "And... Belle's mom is here?"

Cruella rolled her eyes. "Most people who kill themselves and abandon their children to the prospect of arranged marriage to psychopaths have unfinished business, darling."

"You'd think that Blue Fairy would have clued the poor girl in. But I suppose she'd rather watch humanity burn itself to ashes than lift a wand where it doesn't directly suit her," the Blind Witch scoffed.

"Most certainly," Cruella agreed. "I suspect she has her own arrangements with Zeus to not meddle in certain things. She sucks his dick, he flicks her clit. That sort of thing. If fairies have clits..."

Shrugging, the white-haired woman continued, "As for your granny, I suppose she was trying to make up for being a self-centered twat who only pretended to be a beneficent ruler to get the love of the people. But Hades let Cora throw her in the drink as part of their agreement. Another reason that heart-stealing cunt wasn't going to get a clean slate and a pass to the pearly gates just for hugging it out with her daughters. Zeus didn't take kindly to those who made back alley deals with his degenerate brother. Not that he isn't degenerate in his own right, just rather more successful at getting everyone to believe his debauchery is divine."

The Blind Witch spoke up, "At this rate, darling, Snow White isn't going straight to the land of heroes and legends. Now that her enemies aren't all locked up to keep them from interfering in Hades plot, when she snuffs it, there will be a mob _fighting_ to throw her in The Hudson. Not to mention your dear sweet papa. I heard Bo Peep's cousins get to disembowel Prince Charming _That_ is an awful way to go. Before I lost my sight from the sugar addiction, I saw some trolls disembowel a man and then rip his arms off and he still wasn't dead."

"Oh, like that _Monty Python_ bit? How delightful!" Cruella cackled.

"I've lost my appetite," muttered Emma, pushing the rest of her hot-dog away.

"Yes, the food is rather substandard," Cruella agreed.

"That's not my fault!" the Blind Witch growled. "The equipment is always broken. _And I'm blind!_ I have to use magic to see and it's really hard sorting out the magical colors from the real colors."

"If I can keep my car running and not looking like the rest of the beat up junkers in this place, darling, you should be able to keep a refrigerator and stove going, blind or not," scoffed Cruella. "I heard we've been getting some 'normal' people here thanks to that portal Emma's brat created in Manhattan. Maybe the next one will be a Cuban ex-pat who can help you keep this ancient machines running."

"Henry is not a brat!" Emma growled.

"Brat, dork, easily manipulated, whatever," shrugged Cruella. "Despite all the mutual admiration society you and Regina seemed to have formed on your parenting skills, darling, you're both shit at it. Quite pathetic, calling yourselves heroes and legends and us down here villains and deplorable. You're the ones with blood on your hands who refuse to even see the stains on your souls."

" _None of that was me_ ," snapped Emma. "My sister's the villain apologist and I never got a chance to hold anyone, including myself, accountable for any of that 'shit'!"

"Well, in that case," the Blind Witch returned, "lunch is on the house. Not many of your kind around here who'll admit their shit stinks as bad as the rest of us. All the goody-goody snobs in their Central Park West penthouses refusing to admit they did bad things that got them here while we're stuck in East Harlem being mugged and worse by Land Pirates, reminded every day of the crimes we committed. That's the thing. You got labeled a _villain_ in your story, you don't have the luxury to deny it. But the assholes in heroes clothing? If that damned pen wasn't explicit in what kind of people they really were? They can live here as long as they want in denial, pretending they're just not ready to give up earthly things or that there's really some relative they desperately need to meet when they kick it to get closure on their pathetic lives."

"You're saying it's the fault of The Authors that there's literary-based discrimination in the Afterlife?" asked Emma.

"Of course," answered Cruella. "That pen your boy acquired is one of the most powerful and evil magical objects in all the realms. Not quite as powerful as Zeus' crystallized jizz, but quite close."

"Hold on... I touched god spunk!?"

"Well, most of the inhabitants of Mt. Olympus have what with all the orgies," snorted the Blind Witch. "Lucky that thing didn't knock you up! Or your sister up? I understand Zeus made a lot of demi-god babies back in the day getting unsuspecting maidens to stroke his Olympian Crystal."

"Wonderful," winced Emma.

"I wouldn't know. I've never got to attend one of Zeus' orgies," she griped.

"A pity we can't have them down here, really," mused Cruella. "It would surely cheer up a lot of... frustrated souls. Sadly, you can't have the things you love the most. Killing and fucking... and good food."

"You got your car," Emma pointed out.

"Yes, well, it gets keyed and jacked almost every day, so the upkeep is quite a pain," she complained. "Though better having even pot-hole-riddled roads to drive it on than the cobblestoned, mud-pit messes Arthur would have implemented if allowed. We at least have little Henry to thank for _that_."

"Henry is why this place looks like New York?" Emma asked, surprised. "Because of that portal?"

Cruella shrugged and told her, "Well he _is_ The Author, isn't he? He's just... not very good at it and clearly doesn't understand the scope of his, let's be honest, terribly lame powers. But then few do. That Isaac chap who damned me was starting to get an inkling of his true powers, you see, and that's why that old geezer trapped him. Wouldn't want him getting in the way of things, disrupting the status quo - that being that endless line of souls to populate this little amusement park.

"But you're not here about that, now are you?" she recalled. "You're here for your twu wuv!"

"Yeah, I am. So I really need to see Zeus," Emma reiterated

"I told you, honey," sighed the Blind Witch, "you can't just get an audience with Zeus even if his son poppy your mom's cherry. You have to go through our local lord and _if_ he agrees he can _try_ to get you an audience to help your true love, but even if you do, there's always a price. You can't just bring back the dead."

"I know that," Emma grimaced. "I just want to help him move on. He was tricked into making some kind of deal with Zeus because of my sister to bring back _her_ true love and it got him trapped here, unable to move on."

"Well, that's a bitch. Stuck in death's version of Rikers, awaiting a never-coming trial date," cackled Cruella. "And for your sister and her boyfriend? How atrocious! I'd rather dogs mauled my face off than make any kind of deal to help Slutty Sandra Dee and Douchy Danny Zuko."

Rubbing her temples, Emma asked, "Can you just take me to your leader?"

"Don't need to, darling." Cruella pointed a manicured finger toward a man in a black three piece suit with head down coming from the direction of Central Park.

The Blind Witch shouted, "HEY, MY LORD, YOU HAVE A VISITOR!"

Emma frowned, because he sure wasn't dressed like King Arthur. Then the man got closer and her smoothie fell out of her hand and splashed all over her boots, but she hardly noticed.

"NEAL!?"

He was dressed in the suit he'd been buried in, the only 'nice' clothes she'd found in his motel room, that she remembered smelled like Central Park and pizza and had subway tickets in the pockets.

Neal blinked at her, maybe thrown-off by her glasses for a moment, and then uttered over the silence that had followed her exclamation, "Shit."

He backed away, because of course he would, ducking out of her sight. Emma took off, caught by the feeling of deja vu, but when she rounded the corner, it was Neal who grabbed her arm, spinning her and stopping her forward momentum, nearly throwing them both the ground.

She stared.

He stared.

 _"You're_ the Lord of the Underworld!?" she finally shouted.

"Emma," Neal sighed, "you shouldn't have come."

"I don't care! You're Lord of the fucking Underworld, Neal! You could have mentioned that when you were apparently strangling Hook!"

"I was hoping you wouldn't come!"

"Just like last time?" Emma snapped. "Well fat lot of good that did! I thought you were in a good place! Instead you bargained your soul for my sister's dipshit boyfriend!"

She slapped him, because she'd wanted to do that ever since the street in Manhattan. But then she kissed him, because she'd wanted to do that ever since exactly the same time. It wasn't the hard, deep, lust-driven sort that her sister and Hook seemed singularly capable of, but one of longing and sweetness that she hoped would free Neal while fearing he would pull away.

Neither happened.

There was a moment of soul-shattering disappointment at the lack of rainbow light and beating heart, but the warmth of Neal's lips and the touch of his callused fingers against her face brushed that aside for the joy and connection of the moment.

It was only a moment, though. Emma pulled away as the anguish in her chest rose again. "You're an idiot. Why do you keep trusting people who fuck us over, Neal!?"

"I made the deal after you'd come and gone, Emma," he sighed, "or rather your sister had. I didn't know. I just wanted to convince you not to come here. When I saw that I couldn't... seemed better for you and Henry if I was in a good place rather than staying in a room at Granny's. I thought, when it was over, I'd be able to move on and then I _would_ be in a good place."

Emma regarded him sadly. "The real rooms at Granny's are awful enough. You were really going to endure that hell because you thought if I had to choose, I'd choose Hook?"

"You already had, hadn't you? Or I thought it was you who had," he shrugged, "and that even if you'd choose me for Henry, you'd be unhappy. And he... the kid only knew me for a couple of days. I'm more of a concept than a person to Henry."

"You deserved to be a person to him, he deserved to have his father more than I deserved a syphilitic pirate, Neal!"

"I wasn't blind to that flirting at the Town Line, Emma," he reminded. "The way Hook looked at you in my hospital room and you weren't exactly adverse to it..."

Sighing, Emma answered, "My sister's influences got stronger when we went to Neverland. The pixie dust, the magic that makes everyone juvenile assholes, maybe, who knows? It was her feeling those things, though, not me. As soon as I was free, I knew that. But it was _me_ who felt guilty that I couldn't save you when she went after Hook. It was _me_ who called after you, who wasn't ready to let you go back into that light.

"I really thought you were happy," she sniffed. "Why didn't you move on as soon as you got here?"

"I was trying to work up the nerve to confront my mom," Neal explained, running a hand over his face. "You know how that worked out."

"I'm sorry," Emma uttered, angry that this was the impossibly unfair situation they'd found themselves in. "My sister never should have brought your father here, never demanded his help. It should have been obvious Hades would dispose of her, any impediment to their asshole love story he was using as a distraction from his plan."

Grimacing, Neal corrected, "It was actually my father who threw her in. Hades was blackmailing him. I'm not sure he felt bad about it, though. He hated my mother and she hated him. I hated her when I got here, but I watched her with those kids, I talked to people..."

"She felt horrible for what she'd done to you," Emma told him with her a grimace of her own. As horrible as Milah had been as a mother, she had been remorseful, and it didn't make Emma feel particularly good that the woman who just wanted to say "I'm sorry" to her son got thrown in that river thinking her son's one true love had jumped into bed with her own deadbeat lover before she'd even got to see him. It couldn't feel very good to think her loving Hook and then getting herself killed by her estranged husband had ended up screwing her kid over twice.

"I know. I was going to help her move on," sighed Neal, "but then I... well I had this crystal ball with me and I could watch you, sometimes. Found out you'd been the Dark One, made Hook another Dark One, then killed him and were setting out to resurrect him. And I knew Hades had been up to something for awhile."

"So you tried to warn me."

"But didn't figure I'd have much luck. You were always stubborn, and love makes people even more-so, to the point of stupidity, usually," he winced, examining his still-marked palm.

"My sister's even more stubborn, I think," mused Emma, "and definitely more stupidly impulsive for her so-called love. I wouldn't call a desperate obsession out of fear of being alone for a guy she dated a month who kept trying to kill her family 'true love' of the variety that can pass a test _not_ rigged by a god. But they do seem weirdly happy, if at least a good match in being a couple of nimpho jerks."

"Well, I guess that's something then," Neal deadpanned. "My sacrifice wasn't entirely in vane."

"Your sacrifice was as stupid and pointless as Anna coming here for Hook!" Emma argued. "Everyone screwed you over, Neal. Zelena, your dad, me. Everyone who was supposed to fight for you and for true love and for justice let you down. But you kept fighting for me and for Henry."

Emma sniffled and exhaled. "I don't deserve you."

"Hey," Neal argued, "your sister might not be good enough for Hook, but you deserve nothing but the best, Emma. I know you would have fought for me back then if you'd been given the chance. If anything, when I left you, when I trusted August, I thought you deserved better. A princess. A savior."

"No one gets to say what I deserve but me," Emma argued. "All my life I had people telling me didn't deserve this because I was a pathetic orphan criminal or I did deserve that because I was a savior and a princess. And it was all bullshit! None of those people actually knew me! Not even my parents who keep trying to shove their well-meaning but stupid and guilt-driven advice down my throat. I'm not some royal messiah or a number. I'm _me_. I'm _Emma_. And you're the _only one_ I ever really got to be that with.

"And it's not fair!" she cried. "I can't bring you back. I can't help you move on. You're just stuck here for eternity pushing papers for the gods! What happens when I die? When Henry dies? How do we just move on to some happy place while you're here, in a place even worse than Neverland?"

Neal shrugged and answered, "You just do. You go back, you live your life, and hopefully a long time from now when you're old and wrinkly instead of felled by some douchey villain like lame-ass savior prophesy dictates," he smiled a little, "you'll die without any more regrets, surrounded by the people you love, as 'just Emma' and go straight to Heaven."

"Will you still love me when I'm old and wrinkly?" Emma retorted, forcing her own smile.

"Even if you keep your teeth in a glass by the side of the bed," Neal insisted, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "You're my one true love, Emma Swan," he stated with a sad smile, "but you've got a life to live, and you deserve more than one true love, especially one who can't share that life with you."

"But all I want is you," Emma argued.

"As the philosopher Mic Jaggar said, you can't always ge-"

Emma silenced him with a kiss and then told him, "If we can't have Tallahassee, we at least deserve one good moment in Hell."

* * *

It was wrong for there to be no heartbeat beneath the swirls of ink on his chest.

Emma ran her index finger over the word 'Ohana', what she'd eventually found out was Hawai'ian for 'family' and not an ex-girlfriend as Neal had claimed. She'd never gotten the chance to ask when or why he'd gotten it, but that didn't seem particularly important now and maybe some mysterious should remain...

"There has to be a way out of this. So you can... can at least move on," Emma insisted, her head resting on Neal's shoulder.

"You think I haven't researched it?" he sighed. "Hades had a shit-ton of notes on his own schemes to get his heart jump-started, to unbind himself from the sentence his brother gave him to rule this place. And it took that creepy crystal and still didn't work in the end. I'm not a cursed god either. I'm a dead mortal. My heart's rotting away back in Storybrooke, not frozen by a spell. I'm just... a corporealized manifestation of a soul that thanks to the magic of this place has substance like everything else."

"Does that make me a spirit necrophiliac like my sister?" Emma joked. "Seriously, Neal, that doesn't mean there isn't an answer. You researched destroying magic and didn't find that anti-Grail that Henry did right under your nose. Maybe you just don't know what you're looking for, don't have all the pieces-"

"I took a binding oath in the River Styx, Em," Neal told her while running his fingers through her hair. "And kissing my heal isn't gonna get me out of it. And, anyway, I only researched that for a couple of months after getting to the Land Without Magic. I only told Henry about my journal cause of his wishing well bomb plan, which in retrospect was a bad idea. Either I misrepresented that 'plan' or he just-"

"Misunderstood because he was a twelve year old boy going through Neverland accelerated puberty hormone craziness who went from turning everything into an epic operation with a code name to dangerous, delinquent behavior based on half-assed information?" snorted Emma.

"Yeah, well I'd only just met him. You could have warned me. And I didn't know he was gonna get swiped by Pan."

"I know," Emma conceded. "Maybe you'd even have told me about Pan, but I didn't want to talk to you. But at the same time I really _wanted_ to talk to you. I'm not sure how much was my sister and my just being scared that I still loved you and you were with someone else. And then you weren't with someone else and that was even scarier. Plus the whole thing where this crazy woman named Ingrid who was my foster mother before I was on the streets and who was a witch queen from some magical kingdom called Arendelle took some of my memories related to magic so I lost the memories of us connected to those memories and was probably angrier with you about not telling me the truth than I would have been if I remembered at the time that I'd told you how the crazy bitch threw me in front of a speeding car to try to get me to do magic so I ran away from the foster system."

"I remember you talking about her. And I heard about her too," Neal recalled. "She reunited with her sisters and they moved on together, I think."

"It's like fate was working against us," Emma complained. "And also, I'm not good with love," she sighed. "My sister's better. Or, at least, I think she was when she wasn't fighting against my 'reservations' at being with Hook and hang-ups over losing you and fighting for what she believes is love which really isn't and so maybe that's why it's easier for her," she considered.

Shifting a little to look out at the reddish sky, Emma continued, "It was easier to love when I lived in New York in that fake life, even though I'd still been hurt by you, even though I didn't even know what really happened, which doesn't make sense other than that wasn't me. It was the me Regina hoped she could have been so Henry could be happy, who had her memories and knew how to make lasagna but also knew how to love him so he wasn't lonely and messed up. I wish I really could have been that person... or my own better me version of that person who was the kind of mother Henry deserves."

Biting her lip, Emma said, though she knew it wasn't a real option,. "I could stay. Henry has Regina and my parents. And my sister. It's not like they weren't all prepared once to lose me."

"That's the sort of thing your sister would do, not you."

"I know," she sighed. "And my mom. It's what my mom was going to do in Neverland. She can be horribly selfish sometimes in the name of love. And just kind of dumb. She actually thanked Regina for teaching her the meaning of hope through murdering her father and trying to kill her and me and ruining everyone's lives. I think she might have brain damage or something. And I don't want to be like that, or like Anna. But I don't want to have to lose you because this stupid savior shit put a target on the back of everyone I've ever loved either. I wish I _could_ go back in time and-"

Suddenly an alarm sounded, the sort of old-timey air raid siren that Emma remembered from tornado warnings in the Midwest. Before she'd even sat up in startlement, there was a flash of silvery smoke and a _woman_ appeared at the foot of the bed.

She was birdlike and had armor on over a short toga. She also completely ignored Emma as she addressed Neal.

"We have a problem. Mors is dead. The Prisoner has escaped."

Neal's eyes widened. "Aw hell!"

"We must go," the woman stated and another swirl of smoke carried them all to stand outside a replica of the library where Henry had made his speech and which was now engulfed in flames.

Emma was too started by the inferno to realize that she was still naked until Neal chastised the strange woman, presumably a goddess, "Some clothes maybe?"

"You humans, so prudish," she sighed and snapped her fingers, dressing them in togas.

"Can the fire be stopped?" asked Neal.

"No. Somehow The Prisoner was able to get water from The River of Fire. Obviously he had accomplices, we assume demons that may have slipped out of Tartarus when _she_ arrived," the woman finally looked at Emma, "like that one who murdered Morpheus after her sister and her family came here. We assumed then it was an agent of your grandmother's here, but perhaps not, or they were allies of a kind."

"Wait," Emma interjected, "you mean everything with Belle's kid-"

"Might not have been all that woman Fiona's doing," the goddess stated. "We thought a demon killed Morpheus as part of a plan to help The Prisoner escape. It seemed the plan ultimately failed. But perhaps it was a ruse or part of this ultimate escape plot. Either way, it's only because of his murder that mortals were able to access his realm for communication, something which has not sat well with Zeus. He has long suspected this traitor of being behind it"

"Who is this prisoner?" asked Emma, not really that shocked by the demon possession thing. "And who are you?"

"I am Alecto, on of the Furies, agents of justice," the woman explained. "The high gods have long since forgotten the particulars of justice, but us lower deities, the Furies, the Muses, the Virtues, we still try to uphold our duties honorably. As did Thanatos, Bringer of Death. Now killed by a very dangerous man. You would know him as Merlin's late apprentice."

Emma's jaw fell open. "Seriously? The old guy who died taking the darkness out of Gold's heart is _evil_?"

"Evil or insane. Perhaps both," shrugged the goddess.

"How is that even possible?" Neal demanded. "How do you _kill_ death?"

"It would seem the weakening of the barriers between this realm and the so-called 'Land Without Magic' created by the summoning of the Dark Ones and the unsanctioned portals Hades created to transport living mortals back there, to say nothing of your 'deal' and the paradoxes created by time travel that echo still like the discordant tune of a broken harp," Alecto scoffed, "made his previously incorruptible state less invincible. We should have suspected as much if a demon was able to kill Morpheus after Zeus' resurrecting that pirate. If Zeus hadn't been drunk and angry with his sister-wife and ex-mistress for granting Persephone first dibs on Hades' souls for her own torment-"

"Yeah, yeah, he was feeling particularly pro-save-an-asshole-who-hates-women-while-loving-to-bang-as-many-of-them-as-often-as-he-can," sighed Neal. "Get back to the part where Fairytale Hitler escaped."

"He then took Charon hostage using Mors' sword," answered Alecto, "and forced the ferryman to take him to the land of the living where he hit Charon with water from the River of Forgetfulness. Since the books on this end have all been burned and he is using the same water to conceal his location, there is no way to know where he has landed, though one can make educated guesses."

Neal scrubbed a hand over his face and asked, "I suppose because _Death_ is dead and he was the one to kill him, he gets instant quasi-non-dead status or something too?"

"I would not put it in those words," the bird woman sighed, "but essentially that is so. He will be able to reunite his soul and body to permanently reassert his living status as Sysiphus did and orchestrate things such that when Thanatos is replaced and death is no longer suspended for mortal kind-"

"A lot of people could die," Emma surmised.

"At least the bit about regaining his body narrows down the 'where' considerably," said Neal and the goddess nodded.

0"Given his obsession over the centuries and Sysiphus' success, it is logical. My sisters and I have been dispatched to bring him and his conspirators in, but he is cunning. He avoided Thanatos for many generations with the help of his scribes who witlessly or by their own amoral intentions linked his false immortality to some magical beneficence of Merlin's. Finding him before he causes more harm may not be possible."

"Does Merlin know?"

"I have not yet informed him."

"Great," Neal sighed. "I guess I get the honors. Zeus?"

"Charon went to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness for his lack of vigilance."

Alecto vanished without a farewell after which Neal groaned, "I suppose that's next on my list then. Fan-fucking-tastic."

"I'm lost here," Emma cut in. "Death got killed by Merlin's apprentice who wants to be alive again to... do what?"

"Not sure exactly," groaned Neal. "I've been interrogating the bastard for months, but he's worse than Hannibal Lector. That old geezer could manipulate generations, cross worlds, and probably knows how to free my mom and those innocent souls left in torment considering how shady smart he is. I could never figure out what he was up to, not specifically anyway. I'm pretty much a fuck up at my job."

"I guess that makes two of us then, huh?"

"Hey, you were a pretty good savior," Neal argued, walking down the empty street as the library burned. "I bet if you hadn't had your sister cramping your morals and common sense you'd have been great. So you _can_ be great."

"And alone," Emma complained. "It seemed like that 'curse' was broken, but it wasn't. It was just because my sister wasn't _really_ a savior, she was just borrowing that power. She could have her cake and eat it too as long as she was in control. Now she gets to be free and happy while I have all the responsibilities back."

Shaking her head, Emma admitted, "She's right that I'm jealous. Not of her and Hook, but just that she doesn't have to worry about responsibilities and destiny and putting other people first. I remember what that's like, before I came to Storybrooke, and maybe my life wasn't great, but it was _mine_ and I miss that. And it feels like... like part of the whole stupid savior curse was that I couldn't save the one person who'd make my happy ending complete, like it _knew_ somehow, like it was a way to keep me from choosing to give up my 'powers', because I don't know how to be just me and happy and normal without you."

"I wish I had an answer for you," Neal sighed. "I wish I could fix this, Emma. The gods have messed up a lot, put responsibilities on mortals that no one should have because of mistakes they made and it's not fair. I made my choice here. You didn't get one. And maybe that's partly on me for not telling you-"

"If it's on anyone it's August," Emma snorted, following Neal into The Blarney Stone which had no business being in this location, but she didn't question it, "Anna's other drunk manslut."

"Yeah, it'd be tempting not to push him in that river if he dies, but he's not exactly _real_ so he might just cease to exist or turn into another tree or something. Of course, that assumes we can stop a crazy old man from potentially destroying existence."

"You really think he could do that?"

"Oh, he could," said the man behind the bar and Emma startled.

They'd found Merlin and he did not look happy to see them.

* * *

Next up: Merlin laments his own purgatory and his apprentice plots.


	12. The Hall of Orgies

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Chapter Note: Just so you know, I picture the *real* Zeus as played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson if you want to make that your headcanon for this chapter!**

* * *

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE HALL OF ORGIES

"M-Merlin, hey," Emma choked out at the man behind the bar. That bar which had an interior very much like the quasi-Rabbit Hole that Liam Jones had run.

The Sorcerer lifted a brow slightly at her nervousness and then responded as he dried a glass, "I know it was your sister who aided in my demise. I don't hold her actions against you."

"Did you know about her then?" asked Emma.

"I knew the moment your mother found out she was pregnant that she carried twins, and that there was a blood curse upon your line," Merlin answered. "I was trapped in a magical tree. All magical trees are connected."

"The Tree of Wisdom," Emma remembered.

"Yes. But I couldn't see everything. And once you merged, that I could not see from my prison. I feared the curse had succeeded, though it seemed impossible a savior could be born an Evil Twin even if that aberration would have absorbed your special magic as she killed you in the womb. When Emma Swan came to me as the Dark One, I had to assume that you were lost."

"That's why you gave me that warning," Emma realized, taking a seat at the bar with Neal, "when I was little. You hoped I wasn't too... evil yet. That I would remember."

"And perhaps you would have, but your sister did not."

"No, she didn't," Emma sighed and picked at a coaster. "Selective memory seems to be a thing with us. Part of it seems to be the time travel, two universes thing, but even apart from that, she likes to be willfully ignorant about some things. Not that I can entirely blame her. She was stuck living my life, some of it pretty awful. She could more easily block some of that out than I could. I tried to do that when she took over. I managed somewhat with her 'true love' to save myself from the full trauma of the Dark One thing... and from her disgusting love affair."

"Yes, I do regret that Hades kept me from tossing Killian Jones in the River of Lost Souls," sighed Merlin as he cleaned another glass, "to spend forever tormented by his previous lover, Baelfire's mother. I'm sure your grandfather Richard would have gone in on that... if his evil son hadn't tossed him in the harbor... well... that was long before this place resembled Storybrooke," he corrected himself. "But James did like to brag about finally getting to essentially kill his father."

"Wait," Emma sputtered, "My uncle threw my grandfather in the River of Lost Souls!? Why?"

"Because he's evil," Merlin shrugged. "The way he told it, he was in on the whole ruse with King George to lure your grandfather to Paradise Island. He duped Pinocchio into helping him butter up your grandfather, but he never intended to go home with Richard. He hated him for choosing David over him and he hated his brother, of course, due to his curse, and wanted his life to be miserable growing up thinking his father had died a useless drunk. The final chapters to that story of misplaced revenge were to reveal upon his death to Richard that he had died for nothing, to toss him in the river, and then eventually do the same to James so his father and brother could suffer for all eternity."

After a pause, Merlin concluded, "So, you can see, that even fairy charms don't do anything but protect a good twin to survive until birth. It was being merged with your sister that spared her heart being completely and irreversibly blackened."

"Which didn't spare your life," sighed Emma.

"No, it did not. She allowed her lover to kill me," Merlin nodded. "But then, it was a fate I may have been unable to avoid. Just as I could not prevent my apprentice from turning traitor," he sighed while placing the clean glass in a tray on the bar.

"Even with such powers I could not see beyond death. And so I could never be certain what he was up to or if he had the knowledge and cunning to succeed in whatever terrible, laws-of-nature-defying scheme he had long been working on in secret, though I have my suspicions. Which, I assume, is why you are here. He has escaped, hasn't he?"

"Yes," confirmed Neal. "He killed Thanatos and ferry-jacked Charon to take him somewhere, then sent him back mind-wiped, so I'd say we could all use a drink, bartender."

Merlin smirked slightly and took a bottle off the shelf, pouring it's amber contents into highball glasses as he spoke, "Zeus was foolish, too sure of his own power to just destroy him. That's always been the problem with the gods. They should have learned from Prometheus, but they did not. And no doubt my old apprentice wants to do more than simply bring fire to mankind. More likely to burn it."

"You think he wants to destroy The Enchanted Forest?" Neal asked, disturbed.

"The Enchanted Forest. Storybrooke. The Underworld. And unlike your grandmother, ultimately Mt. Olympus. She wanted to become a goddess and rule for all eternity. And she also spared Storybrooke, protected it to live out whatever mortal fantasies she desired. But I believe my apprentice wants to return _everything_ to the chaos that predated the existence of the magical realms, including the realms of the gods. And given that Storybrooke is bound to all these worlds, it too would be destroyed, of course, the land reverting back to the forest it once was. And all souls would be destroyed. Once Mt. Olympus was gone, there would be no bringing back any souls cast into the netherworld by the soul-ripping destruction. There would be no true love's kiss. There would be no magic."

Neal rubbed the back of his neck and considered, "Guess it's a good thing I didn't continue that quest to destroy magic."

"Indeed. One might as well seek to destroy gravity. The worlds in those books depended upon it, were interwoven with magic well before Zeus subjugated them."

"I'm sorry," Emma cut in, "subjugated them?"

"Those books. That quill. The whole 'Author' thing," Neal told her, "it's a sham. They're what binds magical realms to the gods and ensures that all of the souls recorded in those books, by that quill, in the hands of a 'chosen' Author come _here_."

"You really believe _this_ is The Afterlife?" Merlin questioned Emma. "Or even that a mountain and fields the gods play in is what we are supposed to aspire toward? These places are no different than the other magical realms of more unusual properties, like the ones created by genies - just far more _real_ even if the laws are more creative - like giving physical form to souls whose bodies expired in other realms."

"That's why that old geezer was collecting all the unused books," Neal explained while raking a hand through his hair in frustration. "Bound to the wrong person, as that Isaac guy proved, they're dangerous. From what little I could get out of him, he manipulated events and people, including Isaac, to ensure that Henry became the _last_ Author."

"If Isaac had been smarter than he was greedy," sighed Merlin, "he could have found a way to turn his story into an actual realm the way the gods have created magical realms to fill them with more souls, to then cull those souls upon death as their toys. Instead he was just another pawn."

"So..." Emma frowned and soused out, "you're saying that everything my family went through, it's all... like bedtime stories for the gods to tell their incest kids or something?"

"More like a badly written soap opera," Neal confirmed, his mood souring further at just what a shitty deal he'd made.

"We are forever kept out of where we're _really_ supposed to go as long as that magical pen exists and the literal _binding_ spell remains," nodded Merlin. "We have no true free will, not when anything that seems even as fate is really the foreshadowing of that ink and parchment for a destiny that ends in the realm of the gods, be it this farcical purgatory of our failures, the unending torture of Tartarus, or the infinite perfect acid trip of Elysium."

"And now Henry has started a new book," Emma stated, a knot forming in her stomach. "He's recording more stories."

"Culling more souls," nodded Merlin.

After a pause, he continued, "Your family sent souls off on those ferries with looks of hope, believing they would finally move on to some higher awareness, some freedom from the torments of the mortal soul simply bought into the lies Hades perpetuated for his brother. There is no freedom for those who die bound to those books, only being allowed to move on to new stories to entertain the gods. We all simply move from one part of their world to another, lighter or darker, but still far removed from the mysteries that lie beyond such petty whims as those of Zeus and his consorts."

"So, we just break the spells then," Emma surmised. "Break the quill, burn the books with your magic fire-water, and presto, no more magical world satellite TV on Mt. Olympus, right?"

"Anyone in the books can't destroy them," imparted Neal. "It's a fail-safe. Part of the reason, I think, Authors were always found from a world not bound to the book."

"Until your son bound the Land Without Magic to it," Merlin explained darkly. "Which has been causing disruptions here. And was probably also part of the dastardly plot."

"Yeah, Cruella mentioned the portal," Emma recalled with a frown, thinking on what Merlin and Neal had said. After a moment, she realized, "My sister isn't in that book, is she? I mean, unless she's settled on a name and Henry's written it down, then she isn't in it, not by name."

"Names have power," Neal smiled a little.

"And sometimes the nameless have the most," agreed Merlin.

"So, I get the quill before this asshole does and break it again," Emma considered, "and Anna destroys the books. And then we're all free."

"Simply breaking the quill again will not work. It naturally reverts to this realm. Presumably The River of Fire could destroy it as well as the gold bindings of the books, but that's assuming you can get Zeus to part with his collection of mortals - and some of the rather volatile water."

"Well, considering there's a real possibility this nutjob wants to destroy all the worlds he created with that damn pen so that's the end of his soul factories _and_ might just succeed in actually destroying Mt. Olympus itself, maybe he'll listen," huffed Emma before downing her bourbon.

She cracked the empty glass on the bar and addressed Neal, "Well, how do we get to that fancy-ass mountain of the gods, Mister Lord of The Underworld?"

* * *

The Library had burned to the ground, but the subterranean chamber remained along with one of the ferry boats Emma remembered Liam taking. It was all very eerie and smoky and she found it difficult to breath, something that didn't seem to affect Neal or Merlin. Another reminder that her companions were _dead_.

"Charon only ferries souls from the land of the living. These work on their own, sort of like a carnival ride," Neal explained, helping her in, "with only one destination."

There was no mirage when a white portal opened up, nothing like the sailing ships she'd seen then or what Regina had described for either of her parents. It was just a blinding light. And then it faded, the boat docked by white marble steps.

"Halls of Justice," Neal announced and led the way into a column lined corridor where a young man in robes was waiting.

Emma recognized him instantly from Henry's book, from the story he'd written after Hook's return. "Zeus?"

"What souls have you brought me, Lord Baelfire?" the man inquired in an imposing voice.

Neal rolled his eyes. "Oh, cut the crap, Todd, and just make sure the boat stays here. I don't want to have to get dragged back to The Underworld by Alecto. And no pranks. Medusa was not happy about you borrowing her three-eyed toads and I was even less happy about them breeding like Tribbles and infesting my dungeon."

"My name is Theophilus!" the toga-clad young man griped. "And I am not a three-eyed toad thief!"

Passing him by, Emma asked Neal in confusion, "Wait, that's _not_ Zeus? That's-?"

"Todd, the boat valet," Neal snorted. "Zeus' third cousin twice removed... maybe. The whole incest thing with the gods makes that kind of confusing."

"I think Zeus' father's brother impregnated a Centaur who was also related to Zeus' mother," interjected Merlin.

"Yeah, whatever the case, Todd is the result," shrugged Neal. "He looks about sixteen, but supposedly is hung like a horse. He's popular at the orgies. And he _definitely_ put toads in my boat."

"Then why did Hook think he was Zeus?"

"Zeus won't show his face to most mortals," Neal explained. "He has Todd be his stand-in while he does his magic behind some column. He certainly wasn't going to show his face to a bastard like Hook who was known for betraying people he was allied with and that had helped him and was particularly close to his new Author."

"Who was also my wayward apprentice's new Author," lamented Merlin.

"Zeus needed a new Lord, but that doesn't mean he was thrilled with the trade," Neal continued. "He's generally not against ignoring bad behavior if it suits his motives, but Hook's always been a wild card prone to impulsive stupidity. Too much like Hades for Zeus to spare him out of any kindness. He'd also already almost gotten Henry killed on several occasions and Zeus wasn't looking to have to find a new Author again."

Emma grimaced and she followed the two dead men through a series of hallways, up stairs, around corners, through what seemed to be a series of interconnected buildings until they reached the bottom of a grand staircase leading to a golden door guarded by a guy with hooves.

"We need to see Zeus," Neal called up to the guard who sniffed the air creepily and then narrowed his eyes.

"Living mortals are forbidden from Zeus' chamber, even ones who share the bed of the so-called Lord of The Underworld. And there are no dead souls on the guest list for today."

Neal put on his best tough-guy act, which wasn't easy in a toga. "Don't fuck with me today, goat boy!" he snapped. "I may not have been sired by some pansexual freak show or popped out of Zeus' forehead, but my grandmother mother was the Black Fairy, my old man is the Dark One, Merlin here gave that beastie human form, and Emma may be from the land of the living, but she's a savior with powers I'm pretty sure you don't have. _So you're gonna let us in, or we're gonna stick you on a spit over the River of Fire and have barbecued whatever-the-unnatural-fuck you are for dinner!_ "

The guard scowled, but opened the door for them.

Emma lifted a brow at Neal, telling him, "I think I kind of get my sister being turned on by the asshole thing. I'm not sure how to feel about that..."

Neal laughed at that and told her, "The gods don't like me much. No surprise. They still pretty much snub Persephone. I understand there's a lot of opposition to Zeus allowing Hercules' girlfriend to eat ambrosia and become immortal too."

"Well, she was kind of annoyingly damsally," Emma recalled on the walk up the stairs. "And making immortal some girl your son just met and fell for over some three-headed dog hunt seems dumb."

"Hence the prevalence of people in magical worlds falling in love at first sight over absurd incidents of mortal peril followed by a quick shag, wedding, and procreation like the world will end otherwise," imparted Merlin. "What is put down in the books to please Zeus and his minions," he scowled at the goat boy guard, "influences the magical gestalt which inspires the... shall we say 'emotional intelligence' of mortals in our worlds."

"So, what you're saying," Emma surprised, "is that the gods are making us stupid about love because they're emotionally stunted like dumb, horny teenagers?"

"Something like that," sighed Merlin as they entered.

Whatever Emma was expecting of Zeus' chambers, this was not it, but it did lend to the stupid-making theory. The place was filled with fancy pillows that were filled with passed out, naked and half naked people and some only half people who must have resulted from gods screwing animals like the goat guy. It looked like Salvador Dali had painted an orgy and an animal sacrifice.

With one fat guy at the center in a wine-stained toga who raised a challis at them.

"Late to the party, Lord Baelfire! Mind if I borrow your wench for a few? I won't soil her too much!"

Emma lunged at the fat man, threatening, "I'll make you soil your pants, you disgusting-"

Neal pulled her back and glared at the fat man, telling him, "She's not my orgy groupie, Dionysus. She's the mother of my kid. Hit on her again-"

"Yes yes! Terribly sorry!" Dionysus apologized. "Not really a place people in love tend to come, you know. Lots of _coming_ otherwise, if you catch my-"

"Where is Zeus?" Neal cut him off.

"Um... last I saw he was breaking out an older vintage after raining down his wrath upon poor Charon. Lad won't be piloting any boats again. Not that he'd have any job what with Death being dead, of course. But if I were you, I'd cover my genitals or your true love might not be able to enjoy them after Zeus is done with you."

Neal scowled. "Thanks for the advice."

Frowning herself, Emma walked with Neal and Merlin through piles of passed out, fluid-encrusted orgy people and past ornate fountains of wine and chocolate, to another room that was full of barrels and amphorae. There a very heavily muscled and naked man with bronzed skin and slicked-back dark hair adorned with a golden laurel crown was pouring the contents of one of the latter into a large goblet.

"So, Baelfire," Zeus began without looking up, "you have finally come to accept your punishment for letting my prisoner escape." He finished pouring and turned, face chiseled, expression cool. "And how ironic that it seems the arrival of your lover facilitated that. And you've brought our fugitive's failed instructor along as well, I see. Don't pretend you can pass your punishment onto him."

"You're the only one to blame here," Merlin spoke up.

Zeus reacted swiftly, throwing the former wizard up against the wall with a flick of his wrist and then in a flash snapping and crackling bolt of lighting was held against Merlin's throat as the god threatened, "You may be dead, but I can make you suffer worse."

"He's my charge to punish," Neal cut in. "He never did anything directly against you. Or is this one of those instances where your own laws about justice apply to everyone but you and your childish whims?"

Dropping Merlin to the floor, Zeus glared icily at his appointment. "My childish whims? How dare you-"

" _How dare you_!" Emma cut him off. "That lunatic never should have been kept in The Underworld. You should have been paying more attention to the shit he was getting up to when he was alive. And you _manipulated_ Neal, using his goodness, his wanting me to be happy after he died, to trap him here to play jailor to a madman so you could go on having your orgies!

"Well, congratulations!" she seethed. "Now that creep is probably going to destroy all your fun with that stupid magic pen you made up with a bullshit story about special powers and destiny to brainwash mortals into giving you an unbroken line of scribes binding an unbroken line of souls to your chain of immortal amusement parks that's been effectively stripping my people of their free will and keeping them out of Heaven or Hell or whatever there is after these seemingly endlessly entertwined stupid magical worlds!

"So don't you dare threaten either of these men!" Emma shouted angrily, jabbing Zeus in his well-muscled and oiled chest. "You probably even planted The Holy Grail for Merlin to find in some drunken bet with Hades and Ares about death and war! And then when you sobered up you couldn't be bothered to miss your scheduled orgy or banging your sister, or having a rapey three-way with a farm girl and a goat to go and get it so instead of cleaning up your fucking mess before it could become a plague on the magical realms for the next millennium, Nimue's legitimate vengeance killing of a genocidal maniac with your fancy-ass former kegger cup turned her into a lizard-skinned psycho - probably because all you gods are misogynist pricks who think strong women are evil for getting shit done and making you guys look like incompetent fools standing around with your not-as-big-as-you-think dicks swinging in the breeze!"

Emma finished her rant red-faced and with a rather sneering look at Zeus' incesty family jewels, prepared for whatever wrath the mightiest of the gods threw at her.

Instead of zapping her with a lightning bolt, however, Zeus broke into loud gafaws of amusement.

"You have nerve, Emma Swan," he complimented, and directed at Neal.

"I can see why you would sacrifice your afterlife for hers. She has conviction."

"She does," Neal nodded. "It's one of the many things I love about her. But I didn't sacrifice my afterlife for _her_ happiness. You used me to get what you needed."

"The same thing your brother did to Zelena," Emma reminded, arms crossed. "You really want to be a bastard like Hades who used true love to manipulate people into doing shady shit? Because so far that hasn't worked out well for either of you. Your brother got zapped by your vaporizing jizz crystal and now that sorcerer could like... I don't know-"

"Collapse magical realities into a giant blackhole style portal from which no souls can escape to attend my orgy parties?" Zeus continued for her. "Yes, something like that. And I suppose being stuck with my sister-slash-wife having no orgy parties or portals to other realms to engage in bestiality and milkmaid tipping is a less unpleasant notion than ceasing to exist entirely. But why should I care about your grievances when I have dispatched The Furies to hunt down our fugitive? I'm confident they will be successful and everything will return to as it once was. We may even begin repairing all those paradoxes and temporal aberrations created by that stupid witch's spell, which I would think humanity would be grateful for."

Frowning, Emma returned, "Yeah, but not so grateful that we should continue to be your entertainment. A couple thousand years isn't a good enough run? You can't find something else to get your rocks off besides fucking with our lives? Like you did with Neal? With _our son_?

"It's your fault Henry got that damned pen _twice_! It's your fault his father can't even move on to whatever shitty excuse for Heaven you've got here!"

Zeus shrugged. "Very well. If you can find and trap that raging lunatic before my wings of justice, then I will release Baelfire from his oath and allow him to move on to realms _beyond_ my reach. And I will _consider_ transitioning this 'chain of amusement parks' to a less permanent state of being for you lowly mortals. Is that sufficient?"

"Ah... yeah that's-"

Zeus snapped his fingers then and Emma vanished.

Neal glared at the god. "You sent her back!? Just like _that_!?"

"Oh, you wanted to have a sappy good-bye when a madman might be about to murder your son."

"Death is suspended until Thanatos is replaced," Neal reminded.

"Which won't be for much longer," Zeus smirked and turned to Merlin who looked none too thrilled at the implication. "Especially should your son record his aunt's name with that pen. You want to be reunited with _your_ true love, don't you? You'd have the ability to travel into the Realm of Lost Souls, where all those 'released' by Killian Jones were banished by Rumplestiltskin's spell. Perhaps you could even... save her. After all, the more damage your apprentice causes, the more in flux the rules of magic become, especially here. Why not take advantage?"

"You're saying there's a way to save my mother?" Neal interjected. "And all the innocent - or at least not really bad - people your brother threw in there?"

"Perhaps," shrugged Zeus. "That realm was more Hades' pet project than mine. But if there is a way to undamn those unfairly tossed in, then now would be the time to look for it. As my father used to say, every apocalypse has a silver lining."

* * *

AN: Merlin as the Grim Reaper. Yay? or Nay? Will Neal be able to save his mom and Auntie Em? Will Emma and Anna put their bountyhunter skills to use to bring in The Apprentice so Neal can get a de-luxe apartment in the sky-y-y? And if Merlin's tree let him astral project all over the multiverse, does that mean Dopey was astral-chilling in Tahiti while he was a tree? (The actor who played Dopey actually quit because he had come to hate working for Adam & Eddy and that clusterfuck of a show, which explains why in the Wish AU he was replaced "fuck you" style by Stealthy.)

Next up: Speak now or forever hold your peace...


	13. Scissors of Fate

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: Merlin did create the Dark One and instruct a budding psychopath, so I think he might require some atonement after chilling in that tree for centuries. It angers me that A &E made that wussy guy Zeus! Ah, yes, should have used Dionysus, Greek rather than Roman. I've fixed that. Thanks! Blame Ares misspelling on my shitty spell-check software. As for Stealthy and Dopey, there was no resentment, the actor playing Dopey quit and I assume A&E didn't want less than seven in that scene, so they had Stealthy live and Dopey, presumably, die in his place in their wish universe, which was also more than likely a subtle "fuck you" to the actor for telling them where they could stick it.**

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SCISSORS OF FATE

"You have GOT to be kidding me!?" Emma shrieked in aggravation, because not only was she suddenly standing in the middle of Storybrooke's Main Street, but she was once again naked!

And also, she'd appeared three feet from Archie who stumbled and spilled his hot coffee on her tits!

"Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry!" Archie babbled using his tie to clean her up, then apologizing, "That's not appropriate, is it? I'm sorry! I'm just... here!" he pulled off his jacket.

"It's fine," sighed Emma and she used magic to conjured herself in some jeans and a sweater. "I mean, it's a little weird as my kind-of-therapist, but you are gay, so..."

Archie blinked at her. "I... you... what?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. You're single, thin, and neat. You wear tweed and listen to opera. You carry an umbrella and treat your dog like a person. But that's not important right now. Where's Henry?"

"Presumably at your sister's wedding," answered Archie. "You just missed the procession."

"Her _what_?" Emma exclaimed, looking around and noticing for the first time that there were flower petals, confetti, horse shit, and an assortment of other trash on Main Street along with fancy floral arrangements on the light posts. "I left _to help my true love pass on_ and that _skank_ throws herself _another_ wedding _in a fucking horse and carriage procession!?"_

Archie winced. "Yes, well, as I assume you know, all royal marriages are magically recorded in The Book of Royal Marriages and long story short, the only way to remove your name was a royal decree of annulment magically sanctified by the Blue Fairy. Needless to say-"

"My sister and her pirate were eager to be legit again," Emma snorted.

"And decided that given Mr. Purbeck has taken to keeping a rather large and messy homing pigeon coupe on the roof and that the Convent was not presently being used as an emergency shelter for homeless refugees and babies that might be snatched by evil fairies, they would have a proper royal church wedding more in keeping with your parents' ceremony," Archie explained. "I did try to convince Anna to wait, but... she was quite certain you wouldn't want to attend."

"Yeah, not so much," Emma snorted. "Looks like I get to attend _Anna's_ wedding anyway."

She tried to teleport, which made her stumble dizzily. "What the-"

"Oh, apparently there is a three block 'no poofing' ward in place along the processional route. Royal wedding security and all what with the penchant for mayhem."

"Naturally," Emma griped and stomped toward the Sheriff's station to get the patrol car.

* * *

Storybrooke's little used church was located on the grounds of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Convent behind the imposing stone structure and down a gravel path that was, of course, barricaded with a "Wedding in Progress" sign.

Scowling, Emma pulled the patrol car to a stop at the main stairs and then ran past the red Japanese maples up the stairs and through the stone portico that led to a rose garden between the convent and the church.

She did a double take there at an assortment of fancy horse carriages, one a familiar carriage and a familiar horse that she'd left in Central Park but was now festooned in her family's royal livery.

"OH, HELL NO!" Emma growled and pulled open the doors to the chapel. If that bitch had co-opted Geronimo, she would kick her evil ass!

"...speak now or forever hold your - peace," concluded the bishop who'd married Emma's parents (and was currently a veterinarian at the pet shelter) in startlement.

Everyone turned, including the couple at the alter and their entourage who were dressed straight out of The Enchanted Forest. Anna was actually wearing their mother's feathery wedding dress - or a replica of it, anyway - with their grandmother's tiara attached to another god-awful veil pinned to her severely tight hairdo and holding Hook's hands - because he somehow had two of them again to go with a black version of Prince Charming's white wedding suit.

" _Really_?" Anna harped. "You couldn't let me get for real married without ruining things? It's horrible enough you burned my wedding dress! You are so petty!"

"Not everything is about you, Anna!" Emma snapped, walking up the aisle, her focus shifting for a moment to Henry who didn't look especially thrilled to be there in what seemed to be the capacity of Hook's best man for the second time. "If you want to marry a criminal asshole, fine! It's your life to screw up! I'm here to keep an undead magical psychopath from sacrificing my son to destroy reality!"

"What!?" sputtered Regina.

"Mom?" Henry startled as she hurried toward him, "what are you talking-"

Suddenly Anna and Hook cried out, grabbing at their left hands and the bishop grabbed Henry, vanishing in a cloud of black smoke.

Naturally, pandemonium erupted, people (who hadn't really wanted to be there in the first place) screaming and fleeing the chapel while the not-quite-married couple continued screeching, trying to pull off their rings which seemed to have been laced with dreamshade from the black spidering going up their veins on their hands.

While Hook pulled the sword at his hip and lopped off his own hand - impulsive idiot as always - David rushed to Anna, using his tie to make a tourniquet and slow the spread of the poison.

"You are such an idiot!" Anna hissed at a bleeding Hook who had a glittery-green-gowned Zelena to thank for cauterizing the wound.

Emma was too busy running with a purple-rinestone-gown-festooned Regina into the chapel garden to be bothered with her not-quite-brother-in-law's stupidity.

"What the hell just happened!?" the former Evil Queen gasped, adjusting her cleavage. "The wards are supposed to prevent anyone using magic to enter _or_ exit the entire grounds!"

"Well, if you only designed if for _living_ people then it wouldn't for Merlin's former apprentice," Emma replied, heading back toward the car.

"Wait... _what_?" Regina sputtered.

"He killed The Lord of Death to escape The Underworld, so I assume the usual rules don't apply to him. He plans to unbind Henry from that quill to use for himself, possibly to destroy all magical worlds, because apparently that stupid pen is actually just a way for Zeus to make us all his toys to play with when we die!"

"Well," huffed Regina and she magically turned her impractical gown into a suit, "at least I was right that my story was being manipulated to never get a happy ending if all endings lead to that awful place!

"And now we know what that alchemist was up to," she sighed and explained, "We apprehended him a few days ago messing with the ruins in Zelena's barn. We thought we'd prevented whatever it was he'd been attempting, but he seemed quite smug and unconcerned about being caught."

Scowling, Emma reported, "Apparently, my traveling to The Underworld was part of this old creep's escape plan, so obviously he got some minion to split me and Anna and facilitate that séance somehow."

"Well, presumably there's some unbinding ritual involved to prevent the quill from calling to a new Author and that gives us time," Regina reasoned before getting in the patrol car.

"So, he's probably either at the barn or at his big-ass mansion?" reasoned Emma after starting the engine.

"The ruins at the barn wouldn't be helpful for an unbinding spell and I doubt he would head to the mansion with the wards placed on it after Fiona used the portal. More likely he's at that dumpy little house. It has a basement that even Gold couldn't unlock. It's been up for sale by the bank ever since his death. I was rather surprised Henry didn't suggest it over that gray monstrosity Hook used to ply off your sister's panties... before realizing he'd intended to set the pirate up to fail."

"Fine, where is this place?"

"South of the Cannery. The wards extend just past the far end of the cemetery."

"Great," Emma replied and floored it, scattering gravel and scarring Mr. Purbeck;'s pigeons.

"Do I even want to ask what happened to my car?" she asked, swerving onto Route Six. "Did you guys just leave it to get towed or did Anna dump it in The Hudson before apparently sailing as fast as possible back here, _with a horse and carriage_ , to get hitched?"

"I believe your car is still aboard the _Jolly Roger_ ," Regina shrugged as Emma peeled out of the lot. "And the horse and carriage was my doing, though your parents did help. Henry wanted his father's horse. It was a simple matter of a staged mugging-slash-horse theft, something your mother was once annoyingly skilled at. The glamour to disguise a stolen horse and carriage to get both aboard the ship was not as easy, but I'm sure it all made for an interesting news story.

"And before you declare a vendetta against your sister and not-quite-brother-in-law for using them," Regina continued, "your parents and Henry rode in that carriage. The baroque monstrosity Anna and Hook used is parked on the side so the groomsman could re-festoon the six white horses with their combined royal family crest."

Well, that did make Emma feel slightly better, though considering how her parents had treated Neal, not that much better. " _Hold on, did you say combined royal family crest_?"

"They went full out with Enchanted Forest tradition this time around," scoffed Regina. "I'm sure you remember that pomp and circumstance from the Wish World."

She did, vaguely. Even if that world only started to exist the moment she was put into it, Emma was given fake memories of a past that included her own royal wedding. And, yes, there was some mess of a royal procession through the kingdom and banners, costumes, and livery even more absurd than when, lacking a brother, she was officially made the heir apparent at the age of thirteen. She could remember her fake parents not particularly liking Baelfire, refusing to give their blessing, lecturing that according to royal decree she could marry whomever she wanted once she reached the age of twenty-five without their permission, but the law was the law to stop impetuous young princes and princesses from making reckless choices in marriage. Of course, she'd dug her heals in on the matter and made her parents' lives rather miserable... until an unplanned pregnancy forced them to give their blessing and plan a royal wedding in a week with the help of the fairies.

"Yeah, well," Emma finally remarked with a glance at the flower tattoo peaking out from under Graham's bootlace on her wrist, "I'll be having words with my sister later about what she can do with her royal crest."

She felt the magic loosen a bit then as they passed a familiar farmhouse. It was Regina who provided the magic and Emma slammed n the brakes as the car suddenly came close to crashing into a mailbox on a suburban street.

"It's that one," Regina pointed to a red and white bungalow set back on a lot of overgrown brown weeds.

Emma pressed the gas, angling toward the driveway - and just then the old red and white Crown Victoria parked at the curb accelerated toward them.

"What the-!?"

Emma swerved and Regina pulled magic around them. They landed in the weeds at the same time the classic car t-boned the patrol car, slamming it into a telephone pole.

"I'd forgotten about the evil possessed car," Regina remarked, locating the front walk in the weeds and heading for the porch.

"How do you forget about an evil possessed car!?" Emma sputtered.

"It's usually hold up in the garage since Tillman was unable to tow it away. I think the door opens sometimes and it tries to run down the mailman... Part of the reason no one has bought the house."

"Yeah, no shit!"

The drabe green front door of the dumpy little bungalow opened easily with Regina's spell but the door off the kitchen behind the stairs refused to budge.

Emma tried, using her knowledge of the spells cast by the Dark One on her sister's basement, but all she got was an electric shock for trying.

Then Henry screamed.

Together Emma and Regina threw their magic at the wards, fighting against the painful kickback until finally the door exploded inward and the charged through.

Down bellow Henry was tied to a table and the dirt floor was carved in ruins, ruins the blood from a cut on his arm was dripping toward.

At the first splash the ruins lit up and Henry screamed again, just as The Apprentice brought down the familiar unsavior-ing sheers.

Emma fired her gun but the bullet did nothing, nor did Regina's fireball. The Shears of Destiny plunged into Henry's chest, he screamed again, and there was a bright flash of light and a lot of blood.

Suddenly a massive bird swooped into the room, but turned out to be a winged woman with a sword, swinging at the old man. He vanished with the Shears just before the blade could strike him down.

Emma and Regina rushed to Henry who sat up and gaped wide-eyed, looking his gaping chest wound.

Emma quickly put her hand over the gaping wound and healed it, then pulled Henry into a tight hug.

"H-how am I not dead?" Henry gasped.

"Thanatos was murdered," the bird-woman said, "which means that there is no death until his replacement has been officially appointed and takes possession of this sword."

" _Death_ is actually _dead_?" Regina exclaimed. "And... who the hell are you?"

"I am Alecto, Hand of Retribution, Chief of the Furies, bringers of justice, dispatched by Mt. Olympus to retrieve a fugitive soul that murdered an immortal, summoned demons, and seeks to severe the bonds between all magical realms and the gods reinforced by The Quill of Fate and the golden bindings in The Books which record their stories, which together use the magic of the gods and the power of names to bind the souls of those therein to our world."

"The gods are pretending at being _God_ ," Emma explained to Henry, "using their magic to funnel us all into an afterlife they made for us to entertain them like a theme park, and making sure there's enough unfinished business and drama and cliché bullshit that no one ever wonders _why_ that's where souls go, why it's a bunch of petty, juvenile, pricks in togas who decide if we get to prance in fields or burn in pits of fire after working our shit out. It's all the ultimate long con, Kid."

Henry looked stricken. "So... what he said is true. I was a pawn. I was hurting people, not helping them."

"You were doing what Zeus wanted you to believe was right," Alecto stated. "You were also doing what that wizard wanted you to believe was right, playing into his scheme to free himself and take it from you. But your mother and father struck an accord with Zeus that this arrangement will come to an end, that while The Underworld will remain, there will be no manipulations to hasten the arrival of souls who will move to their rightful place, and Elysium and Tartarus will return to being a retreat for the gods and a prison for the Titans.

"But this must be undone carefully by Zeus and the other gods, not in the manner The Apprentice intends, an apocalypse that risks destroying not simply this town but all worlds connected to through the axis mundi of Mt. Olympus... which has been tied rather tightly to this town after that mess with the Dark Ones. He will use it as a means to access and break the barriers between the worlds in a far more permanent way than your great grandmother Fiona. If he succeeds, he may bring down Mt. Olympus itself. But for that he will need a power source. As _luck_ would have it, this little town has one uniquely attached to it."

"The Dark Curse," sighed Regina.

"Indeed. Winning the 'Final Battle' did not destroy the curse, it merely re-caged it. To break the curse entirely without equally powerful light magic to take its place would mean Storybrooke ceasing to exist. And while your true love's kiss," she told Henry, "was certainly enough to revive your mother whose heart was partially protected by her sister's physical form absorbing the death blow which set in motion the reverse chain reaction of reforming the realms thrown into the netherworld, it could not alter something intended by the gods to come into being. Not so long as those books remain bound to Mt. Olympus."

Regina inhaled sharply. "So now that Henry is no longer a protection that keeps the books from being destroyed permanently he can destroy them so that when he unleashes the curse it will destroy everything... just to spite the gods?"

"You were willing to destroy a large portion of your world to live in a fake happy ending where you were akin to a god," Alecto reminded. "Revenge spawns a particular madness. And he has been spiraling into it far longer than you. Clearly he wishes to be free of the gods, even if that freedom for himself and everyone is ceasing to exist.

"Which is why I must reconvene with my sisters," the demi-goddess stated. "He has vanished from this realm, no doubt to obtain the ingredients he first needed that quill to locate. There are secrets - and _magic_ \- beyond the silly stories about your people hidden in the pages of those books."

Alecto left the sword on the table and told them, "This will bind his soul, but be warned, to wield it with your bare hand and take a life, your soul will be bound to its service, making you Lady of Death. Use it only if there is no other choice, for Zeus would very much appreciate the irony after freeing your lover from his own servitude only to bind you to his will."

Alecto vanished in silvery mist then, leaving the three of them alone in the basement, Henry looking particularly dejected at the revelations.

Regina placed a hand on his shoulder and assured, "You didn't know, Henry. None of us did. But it will be over once we catch this bastard. Everyone will be free."

"Or wiped completely from existence if we're not fast enough," Emma reminded.

"Yes, or that," sighed Regina and she picked up the sword in her gloved hand. "I presume this means the reception dinner is being relocated from that awful Italian place to Granny's at least, so that's something."

* * *

Everyone had gathered at the diner, including Hook who now had his hook back on and was looking in dismay at his now poisoned hand in Gold's old jar and Anna who had a flask of the potion Rumplestiltskin had made for David after Neverland and a rather large blood stain on her wedding dress.

When Emma finished her explanation, everyone was floored. And worried.

" _Neal_ is Lord of The Underworld?" Hook goggled. " _Neal_? But he's so... _nice_ and _boring_!"

"And got your ungrateful ass resurrected by agreeing to the deal, you one-handed waste of space!" Emma snapped.

"Oi! Too soon!" Hook whined, holding his arm dejectedly.

"So, basically," David restated while adjusting a tassel on his maroon and silver brocade suit, "we have to apprehend this madman before he destroys our existence. Same old story."

"How does that even work?" asked Snow, stuffed rather uncomfortably into a booth in her ostentatious gown. "I mean, I know Fiona nearly succeeded..."

"Like my own curse," grimaced Rumplestiltskin who wore his usual suit because he'd refused to attend the nuptials of two individuals he loathed, "it was siphoned off the Original Darkness, the chaos out of which the Titans created Mt. Olympus, The Underworld, Elysium, Tartarus. In its original form it's simply a black orb the size of... an apple. It wasn't a curse then, just contained raw power. Somehow my mother learned of it from the books Tiger Lily foolishly gave her in her attempt to save me without having to cut me free of my destiny. She found a way to bind it to a spell. Possibly using an Author and the quill. As such, even when the written spell is physically or magically destroyed, the spell itself remains."

"Like burning the book didn't destroy it," Anna nodded. "Henry and the pen were unharmed, so it just... poofed back into physical existence as soon as the curse was re-set."

"Exactly," Rumplestiltskin nodded. "It took my mother a short time in a timeless fairy realm to bind the energy but it took me many centuries to them... tame that energy in a way that curse could be used to transfer and reform matter from one world to another, particularly one with no magic of its own."

"So... you spent centuries turning a bomb into a transporter," sighed Emma. "And this guy is going to use this quill, the shears, and some other divinely created magical objects to tear apart the last of the bindings that are keeping it in some kind of... dormant magical power source for unlimited portal making and make portals instead to unleash all of its concentrated power and obliterate worlds?"

"Not the most theoretically accurate description, but essentially, yes. And it took my mother mere days to undo most of my work, to return to its original destructive state save for Storybrooke itself."

"We don't have long if he doesn't even want to protect Storybrooke," David surmised.

"What if we can't get all the magical doohikies he's collecting to cancel out the silver slipper glitter and unicorn queefs you shoved into it before he destroys reality?"

"I'd say we make sure it doesn't get to that point," stated Regina.

"Can't we just get our hands on this... orb thing?" asked Hook. "Make sure Merlin's ex-lacky can't alter it?"

"No, we can't," Regina groaned, " _The town_ is the curse now. He simply has to get control over it, and while Pan and Snow did that by _casting the curse_ through a sacrifice, there is no death presently and this madman has magical objects created by gods that he can use to alter those requirements anyway. Besides, Fiona proved a sacrifice isn't need if all you want to do is blow shit up."

"But it may play to our favor that Laws of Magic are currently somewhat... mailable," mused Rumplestiltskin.

"And if his intention is to destroy _everything,_ including Mt. Olympus," Belle amended, "it will take longer. Storybrooke itself wasn't destroyed by Fiona not just because she wanted it to remain, but because it would be harder than the other worlds to destroy as the center of all the worlds."

Rumplestitlskin nodded. "Belle is correct. There is a fail-safe, one last bit of magical containment that is not so easy to break as 'sliver slipper glitter and unicorn queefs'. Long before Pandora was born, when the Titans contained what remained of Chaos, they put a spark of Hope at the very center so that Zeus, in his mad claim for Mt. Olympus couldn't destroy reality completely if he was foolish enough to use it against them. At least not so quickly that they couldn't find a way to push back and stop him."

"Theoretically," Belle said, "if we could tap into that spark, we could use it, rather than the darkness, to stabilize the axis mundis between the realms and not have to worry about all these repeated curses. But it would require a light magic equal to the source... and, of course, have to pierce through all the darkness to make that connection... Anyway, it does give us time, a calm before the final storm."

"Can that alchemist give us any answers?" asked Emma. "Maybe even be swayed to our side?"

"Unlikely," Regina grunted, "but if you want to speak to him, he's in the Asylum.

"I will go to my vault," she continued. "While the actual paper incantation was destroyed after Pan's casting, there are remnants that might be useful protections that I can still harness myself... or perhaps augmented to allow at least some to leave town without suffering complete amnesia , if it comes to that."

"You said I can destroy the books," Anna spoke up. "I should start with that, right? I mean, if we can't capture this guy it won't mean anything, but if we do, then it means we're free. And if that means one less bit of magical bullshit telling me who I am, then I'm all for it."

"I'll go too," nodded Henry. "I want to help free the people I accidentally trapped."

"And maybe we can make use of the bindings first before destroying them. We have a few books in our possession," Belle interjected. "Would we be able to trap him with them?"

"It's a possibility," nodded Rumplestiltskin. "Anna may be able to pull the gold thread free so it could be used for other purposes. Then it would be a simple matter of using water from the River of Fire to destroy all residual magic in the books from the ink and quill."

"Simple if you have water from the River of Fire," Hook pointed out. "Or did you steal a vial after shoving Milah in the River of Lost Souls?"

"Don't pretend you still care about my late wife," Rumplestiltskin spat. "And no, I wasn't. But _someone_ ," he turned a cool glare at Zelena, "was."

The former Wicked Witch shrugged and sigh. "FIne, yes, I have samples that Hades gave me. I'm fairly certain that alchemist broke into my storm cellar looking for it. But I'm not foolish enough to keep in the most obvious place like _my sister_ does with all of her magical knickknacks."

Regina glared and Zelena smirked and scoffed, "Oh, you're still mad?"

"Of course I'm still mad! You dosed me with a lust potion!"

Zelena scoffed. "I'm _sorry_. I told you, it's when I was with Hades and-"

"And you didn't bother to mention anything after you weren't!"

"I hardly saw the point. You got split and your less inhibited side went and ruined the prank, and it's not like you were ever going to act on it after that."

"Enough arguing," Emma spoke up, not really following what that was about, but not having the time to care.. "Zelena, you go and get your fire water. Belle, Gold, Henry, and Anna will get the books and try to disassemble them while Regina gets any protections that will help the town in case we can't capture this guy and tie him up with, ah, magical book bindings."

"I suppose," David considered, "Snow and I should warn the towns people. If people want to attempt to leave, they should have that right. But we'll let them know Regina is working on a way to ensure they have memories, even if it's just their curse memories."

"I'll help with that," Hook offered.. "Sure to be a lot of panic even if this should be old hat by now."

Emma watched everyone head out then took a moment to just _breath_ before she too stood up and made her way outside into the rather chilly night, surprised to find her sister sitting alone on the front bench.

"I thought you'd be annoying Gold on the drive up the hill" Emma remarked.

"They're going to bring everything to the Library," shrugged Anna, "and Gold _is_ the Dark One, so my presence isn't really required for book transport."

"I guess that's true," Emma agreed and took a seat beside her sister who was holding her engagement and wedding rings. "Having second thoughts about marrying Captain Codfish?"

Anna threw her a sour look. "No. I just don't feel like wearing rings that nearly took my arm off."

Emma sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What do you want, Anna?"

"I wanted to talk."

"About what? Accusing me of interrupting your wedding to spite you? Or that you're motivation to try and contact Neal was in the hopes that you'd get rid of me long enough to have your wedding without poor pathetic Savior Emma killing the mood? Cause you don't get credit for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons."

"And you think I'd invite you when you called my relationship abusive crap?"

"Oh, spare me, Anna," Emma groaned. "You're not the victim here because I constantly pestered you into doing good things. I'm the one that constantly had to fight against your inclinations to do _bad_ things. To be selfish. To be a jerk who doesn't care about others. _I'm the one who gave up my son_."

Anna looked mildly stricken and argued, "I said I was sorry for messing up your happiness."

"No, you didn't actually," Emma shot back. "You made a lot of sarcastic quips and accused me of being jealous."

"Yeah, well, maybe, but if it wasn't for this jerk, _Emma_ , you wouldn't have made it through the first half of your 'story' without ending up as damaged as I am by this blood curse if you survived at all," Anna pointed out. "You needed my nastiness and ambition to get out of that situation by any means necessary. And I'm not sorry that losing your magic made you lose your grip and I got to sit in the driver's seat and play Savior. You were doing a half-assed job of it. You didn't want to accept all the responsibility even _before_ it came with a prophesied death sentence. You wanted to run back to a normal life without magic and storybook characters!"

"But I didn't," Emma countered. "We both know it wasn't _you_ that read Henry's story and decided to go back to that fight."

Anna let out a sigh. "Fine. I'll concede Mom's theory that we both play our parts in that mess."

"We did," Emma agreed. "But I get to be mad, Anna. _I'm_ the one that actually had the savior destiny crap and I was never nasty or ambitious. You can look at that part of our lives now with your unfiltered, apathetic perspective and leave me with the emotional meltdown. You can have your true love and happy beginning or ending or whatever. But me? I'm never going to get the life I could have had, Dark Curse or not, if you never existed - and there wasn't genie magic involved to make it some badly ironic lesson on not basing your life on wishes.

"And _you_ might have liked the person _we_ were - actually liked instead of just more than that simpering princess - but we weren't going back to _my_ life, so that stupid wish world with you sabotaging me actually getting true love is as close as I've gotten since that fucking motel room in Portland."

Anna threw her arms in the air. "You're seriously going to blame that stupid wish world on me? It didn't even make sense! It had a completely different history that didn't even add up, because apparently our family never got blood-cursed so I didn't exist or you'd be dead not being saved by your savior magic and that geezer's spell. But I still had to technically exist since you were inserted into that world instead of being created by it. So, yeah I fucked up you getting everything you wished for. And maybe my liking being a _jerk_ more than a simpering idiot and wanting to get back to _my_ true love is what got us out of that lie as much as you not wanting your actual kid to find out your fake-ass version of him murdered his other mother - though don't even try to pretend you liked that version of _us_."

Emma's shoulders slumped and she sighed. "Fine, maybe that doesn't count. But how can I not be pissed off that I got the shitty journey and then you come along and get the happily ever after? You even got to create a shared memory with our parents, entwine your love story with theirs. I _had_ a story that was kind of similar to theirs until you changed it, so now I've got nothing to relate to them with. I've got nothing to prove to them in any way that seems to matter to them or anyone in this world that my love, my life, in this world was as meaningful and true as all the fairy tale crap that came before or after. That just _ceased to exist because of you_."

"Oh, yeah," scoffed Anna, "losing a _story_ is a great sacrifice. I lost our parents love and affection, their _trust_ , Emma. When they thought I was you, I could do no wrong, but the moment I'm a cursed version of you? I'll always be inferior. I'll always be the evil sister."

Shrugging, she concluded, "Killian's the only one who doesn't look at me like a ticking time bomb."

Emma raised a brow and asked, "Is that why you were so quick to get hitched? Because he's the only one you think wants you around?"

"No," Anna defended. "And I'm not with him because he's my only option or because I don't think I can do better or deserve better, which I know is what you're thinking. That's how _you_ interpreted it when you were part of that weird mental ménage à trois. That he was an asshole, but he worshiped you and it was your job to give everyone their happy ending, so if you were his, you could find a way to make that work. But that's you, not me."

Emma frowned, realizing that was true. It wasn't the right way to look at things now. But it had made sense _then_. Her life had been so hard, filled with so much pain after Portland that she'd closed herself off to loving again. It hadn't helped that both when her mother's (or then roommate's) encouragement and whatever Regina had put in her memory spell to give Henry a good life allowed her to feel hopeful again, that those she opened her heart for were quickly snatched away. Or that when she started dating Hook a year after leaving Storybrooke, it was after a year of being brainwashed into still thinking that Neal had never loved her (one part of Regina's spell she couldn't be grateful for), only to see Neal and yet another man she loved (however foolishly) die.

So when Neal died, when Walsh was killed by Zelena too, Emma had reasoned that she wasn't meant to have that kind of happy ending. Or Anna had reasoned? Or the both of them. That was still a bit confusing sometimes. But it came down to trying to reconcile two contradictory sets of emotions by believing it made sense to throw herself into loving a man who couldn't be a good man without her returning his feelings - and who would never ever leave her if he depended on her that much and had grown that addicted to being seen as a hero. It wasn't healthy, obviously, and _she_ had known that while _Anna_ hadn't cared. But _she_ was the Savior and that meant making sure everyone else had a happy ending, and so she'd given in to codependency kicked in and she allowed herself to become Stepford Swan. It wasn't even about loving the one she was with, it was about loving the one that was left.

At least, that's how Emma had been looking at since getting her independence back. But that wasn't her. And it wasn't even completely Anna, either. It was the two of them engaged in a tug-of-war, and even if Anna usually had the upper hand, the emotional mess that her sister had become during the progression of her relationship with Hook was probably in large part due to Emma either fighting it or making up rather pathetic justifications for it that conflicted with her sister's actual love for Hook... if a part of her actually was capable of that.

"I guess I haven't been entirely fair to you," Emma finally conceded. "It's hard to... separate out my point of view sometimes."

"Well, being a sort of sociopath helps with not getting attached to pointless crap," shrugged Anna. "And being okay with manipulating Mom and Dad into a big-ass wedding again. I figured it was best to strike hot on the guilt before they realized that by law, since I was created by a curse, I'm basically even less an official family member than your bastard kid."

Emma frowned at her calling Henry a bastard but she couldn't exactly argue against that.

"I'm sorry Mom and Dad are so judegy," Emma told her. "I think you're a jerk, yeah, and I don't like you a lot of the time, but I don't think how you were made makes you any less family. You're still my sister."

Anna smiled a little at that. "Thanks, I think."

"Sure," Emma laughed a little and toyed absently with her necklace, drawing her sister's attention.

"I'm sorry about your things," Anna gestured to the keychain. "I really didn't mean for rats to gnaw on your boxes."

"It's not your fault," Emma sighed. "Why would you care about junk that isn't yours? I'm just glad it didn't get poofed into nonexistence with the Dark One thing."

Anna shrugged. "It's supposed to be born of true love, right? That's what Belle said, anyway. I never knew what to make of that. But it means something to you. It did even when that meaning was all twisted up... like Killian's ring, that he gave me when I was the Dark One."

"That his brother made from a gem he got by murdering people?"

"Yeah, that one," Anna nodded. "Finding out its origin makes everyone else think it's a creepy murder trophy that an asshole gave to his gullible kid brother as he was kicking it, a death he had coming as the price for sacrificing all those innocent men to get a magical jewel to get a naval commission. And, okay, maybe that is what it is, technically, but I still choose to see it for what we both believed it was, because that meant something to us, and that's the one pure thing he owned at the time, that he gave to me when I was the Dark One to remind me of the good person I was under that curse. To have hope that I could make it through back to myself.

"And, okay," Anna continued, "I know that I wasn't ever a good person. But Killian hasn't been in three hundred years either. Which doesn't mean we don't want to pretend that we can be. Pretending can keep you sane. And the princess pretend was nice while it lasted, having your magic and being a savior with everyone's unwavering love and support, but now I am what I am and you are what you, and I guess we have to make the most of that," she concluded with something of a resigned expression.

"I suppose we do," Emma agreed.

Shaking her head, Anna told her, "Look, Emma, whether you believe it or not, I am sorry that anything I caused you to lose made you angry and bitter, think you were the loser all those foster parents said so you were unable to see true love when you tackled it in an ally. I never got your thing with Neal, but I'm sorry if any part of me is the reason you weren't able to save him. I know things would have been different for us then, but you could've been happy and then one day maybe I'd have been free to go make the day of a very dejected pirate drinking himself to death, and you'd have been free of me to _really_ find your Tallahassee. And then you wouldn't have to be so sad on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life."

"But we can't change that," sighed Emma.

Anna grimaced. "No, we can't. And it sucks. We're not so entirely different. We're just... forced by crappy circumstances to be envious of what the other has. That's what I meant. I like to be liked, to be important and adventurous. Be a princess. You'd rather be standing in the background, rather have the ordinary things that regular people have without titles and costumes. We got stuck with the wrong roles, and there's nothing we can do about that."

"Yeah, we just have to make the best of it," Emma agreed and told her sister, "I'm not unhappy for you and... Killian. As your sister, I want to be happy for you, but..."

"You've still got that savior drive in you, even if you don't have the destiny anymore," Anna concluded for her.

"I am sorry your wedding got ruined, though," Emma told her. "Especially the, ah, hand thing. I mean, since now it's..."

"Irreversibly necrotic?" Anna finished for her. "To be honest, it was me who spiked our rings."

Emma's jaw fell open. "You... what... _why_?"

"Well, I got the idea from Henry... well... Regina when she mentioned that Henry had jinxed our rings... but she thought it was maybe best to leave the contraceptive spell on them considering the Evil Twin curse thing. Anyway, I rather like his hook, and when he showed up all excited that he'd convinced Gold to give him back his hand..."

"So instead of saying something you _poisoned_ your rings _at your wedding_ to _destroy his hand forever_?"

"Well, our family's weddings need dark magic drama, right? Seemed only right. I didn't know there was any real drama to be had. And we'd have been actually married by the time it kicked in if you hadn't interrupted the ceremony!"

"Again with the you don't plagiarize?"

"Shut up!" Anna huffed. "It was short notice. I wanted a good, properly dramatic family story while I'm still a part of it. I was going to blame that alchemist. And, okay, maybe I didn't entirely think it through. But it all worked out."

"Accept for Hook."

"Meh. He'll whine about it for a few days, call me names, then I'll make it up to him in lots of kinky ways and he'll forgive me."

"You two really are messed up."

Anna sighed deeply. "Fine. Whatever. I don't want to argue about that anymore when we could be obliterated from existence shortly. I just want to be happy that I got to know what it was like to be truly loved, whether I can truly feel that without left over bits and pieces of you or not. You got to actually feel that, all on your own, and it was all yours and Neal's. So even if I can't really get that, no matter what crap Mom and Dad shovel at you, I know you were happy, Emma, and that the good and bad stuff in your life means more to you than just who it made you as a savior. It's your story and that matters, whether it's written down or not."

"I suppose you're right," Emma conceded with a tight smile.

"Are we cool then?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Anna, we're cool."

Anna straightened up and insisted, "Great, so let's destroy all this fake-ass divine crap so more people don't get screwed over, win the war we didn't even know we were in, and kick that old geezer's wrinkled undead ass so I can get married!"

"Yeah, all right," Emma agreed, standing as well. "But first, you really need to change out of that dress. It looks like you brutally murdered a swan and pulled on its bloody carcass."

AN: The description of The Apprentice's house is from the show. He also had a matching 1956 Ford Crown Victoria out front. I decided to _Christine_ it up. Some credit to violetfaust for various posts on tumblr about Emma's terrible justifications for her relationship with Hook. This chapter mentions the Wish Universe, that fucking mess! As for its logistics, A &E said in an interview that the entire history of the wish universe is different even preceding the curse. Adam also said it is now a really real place. Jane Espenson, however, quick to rather (surprisingly) angrily tweet that Adam was essentially talking out of his ass in those interviews and it's not remotely real. So which is true? I won't delve into whether Wish World was vaporized out of existence after we have to presume Aladdin is un-genied or if it still exists and Henry is underage knocking up Lady Violet in a rape flower field in Camelot. (Knowing A&E, it's probably the later just so they can revisit that farce if necessary and have Hook go drinking with his older self or something.)

"You don't get credit for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons." -Jessica Jones


	14. A Strange Love or: How I Learned to Stop

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This writer was feeling lazy as fuck and decided to skip right to the end instead of trying to bullshit through magical MacGuffin plot devices.**

* * *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A STRANGE LOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE DARK CURSE BOMB

In retrospect, Emma should have put off talking with her sister until _after_ interrogating their alchemist. By the time she reached the Asylum, the poor sap was being sucked into a familiar hat in the hands of The Apprentice.

"Perhaps you'd like to join my friend?" the old man inquired.

"Perhaps you'd like a ticket back to The Underworld," Emma shot back, gathering magic in her hands.

She had hoped to avoid a one-on-one confrontation. This guy was obviously dangerous, powerful, and almost certainly insane enough to have his own cell down here. But Emma at least expected her attack to have _some_ impact. Instead, like attacking Jekyll, the sorcerer barely flinched. And even _more_ insulting, he _laughed_.

"Saviors," he scoffed while putting his hat upon his head. "To whom so much is given, and in whom so much hope is placed, but yet they're always such fools. You think you're some sort of savant when your gift just _turns on_ , but you're just a magical savage, no training, no understanding, no control. Have you even learned one single spell or is throwing raw magic around the extent of your tricks?"

"Throwing raw magic around has knocked a lot of bastards like you on their asses!" Emma hissed, and she tried to gather her magic together again, but before she could complete it, the old man had his shriveled weird wand at her throat.

"Perhaps it was your sister doing the learning then. Rather a waste, don't you think? Weeks wandering around her mind with all those Dark Ones, and _that_ is the best you can do? You couldn't even take the opportunity for some tutoring and I suppose she just let them do all the heavy lifting, channel their knowledge for trapping memories and ripping out hearts rather than take the time to actually learn how to do it all on her own. Six weeks with a phantasm of the most learned of the Dark Ones, and this is all you've got? I actually had hoped choosing you to succeed Rumplestiltskin would lead to a bit more of a challenge. But you're just pathetic, aren't you?"

Sadly, she was. Emma's lessons had been all of a few days with Regina which had been mostly to rely on her instincts and her willpower more than any book, because she was, honestly, a crap student with books and Regina realized quickly that she was more action than academics and they didn't have time to change that. Then it was Anna who had all the power and then some, and Emma had wanted no part of the Dark Ones' whisperings even if she couldn't help but absorb a few things while Anna _had_ just let their experience guide her rather than learning the techniques.

"Why are you doing this?" Emma demanded as the wood dug into her neck. "You're willing to sacrifice thousands, perhaps millions of lives just to spite the gods?"

"When life and death are nothing but prisons, nonexistence is the only escape," The Apprentice reasoned before vanishing in a swirl of black smoke.

* * *

All the details pertaining to how they reached the climax of Storybrooke's worst fiasco wasn't terribly important. They had, at least, unbound the books, sequestering the other realms and had apprehended The Apprentice, but he'd still managed to set things in motion to revert the Dark Curse.

They'd managed to unbind most of the books, to cut those worlds off from the destruction before it fully began, but they couldn't cut themselves free and still save those worlds, which left them running out of time until there was none left.

Much like had happened with the Doomsday Crystal, the trees that had been transported back to The Enchanted Forest to make room for Storybrooke began exploding through the pavement and buildings while at the same time the town's infrastructure just started unraveling, everything put there by magic rather than acquired from the outside world disintegrating like piles of salt in a rain storm..

The road out of town became a massive bloody car wreck and half the Cannery's fleet of lobster boats began to sink from freak waves as the currents and tides reversed, their occupants doomed no matter whether or not Hook and Anna were able to rescue them aboard the _Jolly Roger._ That was before the cars and ships created by magic began to themselves unravel.

Regina had tried to cast her spell to solidify people's cursed memories, but by then there was no longer magic separate from the Dark Curse itself, the magic of the Land _Without_ Magic pushed aside, trapping them in a void while in the sky above the tendrils of remaining magic were being pulled away, siphoned into a growing darkness that she well remembered from The Black Fairy's spell: nonexistence.

To everyone with magic in their blood, it felt like something was being ripped out, surgically removed by a sadist with a scalpel and no anesthesia. It was no less terrifying to everyone else.

"We failed," Snow wept, holding her husband where the faux historic "Welcome to Storybrooke" sign used to stand but was now just a few old moss-covered cobbles. Both of them had become weak, clinging to each other as the magic that allowed them to live with one heart was sucked out and destroyed.

"We kept the other worlds safe," David stoically reminded. "That counts for something."

"Well, at least we won't exist much longer to feel the disappointment," mused Regina with an arm around Henry and then turned to Emma.

"You should take Henry, see if you can still make it out. You won't have your memories, but you'll _exist_."

Emma swallowed thickly. Deja vu all over again. But different.

Everything suddenly became very still, the last gasp before the end.

Looking at her son, Emma saw as she always did his father in his warm brown eyes and she hoped capturing that old asshole meant the deal still stood... assuming they'd at least protected Mt. Olympus against the impending magical mega-bomb. Even if they did, she had no idea what would happen to everyone here, if their souls would move, be trapped in the Netherworld like a sleeping curse with no bodies to go back to, on or just... be obliterated like they never existed, like none of it had mattered.

Then Emma remembered Belle's crazy 'theory' that everyone had half tuned out like most of the things she prattled on about and she had a thought, possibly absurd, possibly pointless, but she had to try. So she took Henry by the shoulders and told him, "If this doesn't work, you leave."

To Regina she demanded, "You make sure he leaves."

"Mom, what-"

There was no time. Emma ran to grab the reigns of the horse that Henry had tied to a tree. They'd had to ride here when the town's local roads got swallowed up by forest and all but a few cars disappeared. The other horses had all spooked and galloped off, Regina even getting thrown before they'd reached the clearing. Apparently, compared to Manhattan traffic, getting sideswiped by cyclic and pelted with bottles by drunk homeless people, an apocalypse was no big deal for the seasoned carriage horse.

Emma had never properly learned how to ride. She supposed Geronimo hadn't done any riding of that sort either in a very long time, but she found her barrings and he galloped in the direction she urged, toward the old toll bridge and from there up the ridgeline's trail, past the old campground where the Flynn's had set up their tent that fateful night and found themselves trapped inside a storybook nightmare.

And from there Emma reached the wishing well, quickly dismounting.

"Love is more powerful than magic. Hope is more powerful than Darkness," she recited, yanking the chain from around her neck, thinking of the first time she did magic. No spell. No training. .Just _love_ and the deep desire to protect those she held dear in her heart, _hope_ that this wasn't the end of everything she had dared to dream of.

Emma clutched the small bit of tin tightly in her hand and remembered what it felt like to be truly loved and love so deeply in return, to believe in a home and happiness when she was a homeless car thief stealing from convenience stores.

She focused on her love for Henry for she wanted all the chances she never got, for parents who could do things right with her brother, even her sister and Regina who could be more than others had told them, who could fight against what magic or genetics (or both) had made them.

She had hope for that future.

And on Neal, a love that burned with pain, a hope that he could find peace. Love lost could be a more powerful love than any other. It could corrupt a heart, turning it black and destroy worlds. Or it could stop that destruction and heal, and it was on the later that Emma concentrated and reached deep into her heart and the strange magic her parents and her presumed complete destiny had created.

She had love for her family. She had hope that they could find happiness. She had hope that she would be reunited with her true love one day to share all of the unwritten stories they would make.

When the burn grew so great that it felt like her heart might spontaneously combust and turn to ash in her chest and her hand glowed so brightly her bones stood out like an x-ray, Emma unclenched her first and watched the small, brilliantly lit piece of tin fall into the dark depths of the well.

* * *

Regina stood ready to shove Henry over the town line if need be when not unlike the triggering of her sister's time portal, a sudden, massive pillar of brilliant light erupted from behind the trees, up into the sky, and right at the nothingness.

It struck with a deafening crack and the shock wave of rainbow light that followed knocked over everyone not already moaning on the ground from their injuries as it rippled through the town, vanishing the trees, repairing the buildings, healing those wounds incurred in the destruction.

Where moments ago Regina and Henry had been standing amongst bloodied townsfolk and bits and pieces of their cars and luggage - presumably parts that had come on the train over the years - everyone was now without a scratch and their cars... well... back on the road with the scratches they had from three decades of use.

"She did it!" Henry exclaimed. "Mom saved us!"

Indeed, it seemed that Emma had.

* * *

Out in the harbor the turbulent sea went calm and the sinking, fragmenting boats were restored allowing Anna, Hook, and the few others who'd joined them aboard the _Jolly Roger_ to cast off life preserves and haul them in.

A swish of Tinkerbell's wand observed that magic had been returned as well, which helped in the rescue considerably.

"You have to admit," Hook said after a self-congratulatory swig from his flask, "playing the hero does feel good, aye, luv?"

"It does," Anna agreed and took her own gulp, giving her almost-husband a considering look.

"What? Not terribly upset that ripply rainbow light didn't restore my hand, are you?"

Anna shook her head, wondering if she should admit...? No. She wasn't keen on being _that_ reformed. "I was just thinking. I mean... you felt that. I know it's not the first time I've experienced the whole true love ripply rainbow light thing, but..."

"Aye," Hook nodded. "T'was a bit different than breaking a run-of-the-mill sleeping curse or a memory block. Or it's the one doing the breaking. Belle mentioned once, about how when Emma broke the Curse originally by waking Henry, when she finally believed in what and who she was and that magic was real, that it felt far more powerful than any since."

"She may no longer be a designated savor," Anna mused. "But she was created by true love. She should feel it more deeply, manifest it more powerfully."

"And you're worried you can't channel the magic of true love without your sister playing parasitic twin?" Hook asked.

"I don't know," Anna shrugged. "I'm the product of a curse. But I don't want my life defined by that. I don't want to end up like my uncle. Or Zelena. And I'd rather not be seen my whole life as the physical manifestation of an affliction upon my family's bloodline."

Hook eyed his true love and deduced. "You want to find a cure. I can't imagine that's easy or it would've been discovered centuries ago and this Evil Twin thing known of only in history books."

Anna tipped her head. "When have you ever backed down from a challenge? You spent centuries hell-bent on taking down the Dark One. You pursued relentlessly even when given no indication that your salty seduction was having any effect. And if Emma can stop an apocalypse, this shouldn't be that hard in comparison."

"Aye, I suppose. But to be fair, _you_ gave some indications," Hook argued, "through your sister's frosty refusals and then gave in without resistance once she'd been subverted."

"Well, okay, that's true," Anna conceded. "But my point is, I'm going on a quest to rid my family of this curse. I might not be able to make myself into someone else. At least... I hope not entirely. I mostly like who I am. But if I can make sure no other families have to deal with this, then maybe that's the one good thing I can really do with my life that matters," she declared. "So are you in or are you out?"

"If I say I'm in," Hook inquired, "does that mean the odds improve for another generation of Joneses?"

Anna rolled her eyes but smiled. "If I say 'maybe' do the odds improve for you putting that flask away and loading up with enough supplies for a lengthy and not entirely sex filled honeymoon?"

"We're still not technically married, luv."

The sea suddenly began to boil off the starboard bow and though they prepared for a krakan or some other sea beast, it was actually the _Nautilus_ surfacing.

The hatch opened and Captain Nemo emerged, remarking, "A mermaid brought me a rather confusing wedding invitation. I think she also stole my forks. What's this about Emma having a sister? And where can I purchase more forks?"

888

Merlin's former Apprentice was none too happy, bound up on the floor like a caterpillar in a cocoon in the middle of the Library with Zelena pointing his own wand at him. He was less happy when three birdlike women appeared, the leader taking the golden sword from Belle's daintily gloved hand.

"Oh, how those bindings must burn," Alecto taunted the sorcerer. "You'll be pleased to know that there is a new Lord of Death ready to take this sword and strike you down. I do think he will truly enjoy it."

"Let's go for a ride, old man," one of the Furies hissed and lifted him up with her sister, carrying him to the elevator.

Instead of opening to a car, it opened to a glowing portal which they stepped through just as the rest of Henry's family minus Emma, Anna, and Hook entered the Library.

Ignoring them, Rumplestiltskin demanded of the chief Furry, "I know Emma made a deal to free my son from his servitude. I assume her side has been met."

Alecto inclined her head. "It has. He is no longer Lord of The Underworld. And as you all are now free to live your lives as just that, without strings attached to please the gods with your stories, The Underworld will become merely a way station for souls to pass on beyond Zeus' reach when they are ready. Which does not mean my sisters and I will not punish any who tamper with the realm of the gods or seek to use magic not of mortal worlds."

"Of course," Rumplestiltskin allowed. "We all still have jobs to do, even if we are not playing roles on the stage your creators built."

"Indeed, and mine is not quite done here."

First, she turned to Regina and imparted, "The Wish World is no more. Gone are the soulless, defective carbon copies of you. But your essence remains." She pulled a heart from inside her cape and then in rapid fashion, before Regina could react, snatched out her own heart and smashed the two hearts into one.

Regina gasped.

"You cannot save yourself by splitting yourself to rid yourself of darkness and then send your other half off into a fake world created by a genie, the gods' prank upon humanity," Alecto said cooly, handing the heart back to Regina. "Such an act is cowardly and foolish. If you wish for true redemption, you will fight back against that darkness you yourself put in there with your light."

Alecto then turned to Zelena, moving her blade lighting fast to the former Wicked Witch's throat and holding it there as she hissed, "But you, I have little sympathy your for you even with your father's curse. You have been given more chances than any despicable person such as yourself should to better yousrelf. But that requires remorse, of which you have none. And self-awareness enough to admit your failings."

She clicked her tongue and continued, "Every mortal woman who beds a god thinks above her station. Had I the full powers imbued by this blade, I would cleave off your silly red head and plant it on spike outside the Halls of Justice to remind those being judged what befalls bitches who think they can become gods.

"Instead..." She retracted the sword, dropped it to her side, then thrust it forward in lightning swift motion, imbedding the golden blade in Zelena's abdomen.

Everyone gasped, including Zelena, but instead of blood or guts when Alecto pulled it free, there were tendrils of green light and the redhead wailed and clutched at her abdomen, the light seeping through her fingers until the last wisps were sucked into the sword and her shrieking subsided.

"What... what did you do to me!?"

"I exacted justice for those you have wronged. I have taken away, _permanently this time_ , the thing that makes you special: your magic, and the thing that makes you happy: your child."

"You... erased my daughter from existence!?" Zelena shrieked.

"That girl was a time aberration," Alecto stated, "created as a result of actions undertaken in the past that should not have been. Time is sacred and it can't be changed to suit any one person's desires without causing harm to the lives of countless others."

"That's not fair!" Zelena wailed.

"Me me me. It's not fair!" Alecto taunted, imitating the redhead's accent. "Once a pathetic toddler, always a pathetic toddler. A mother should want to spare her child from her own despicable fate, not suffer through it so she can take her on play dates and feel important!"

"I'm sorry!" Zelena continued to wail.

"Only for your loss," Alecto accused. "Many paradoxes were created by your little time stunt. For instance, Killian Jones falling drunkenly in lust with a blonde temptress he did not know was from the future, thus enticing his past self to alter his reason for ferrying your family," she directed at Snow and Charming, "to Neverland from penance for wronging Henry's father to the desire to bed his mother due to what he perceived as nothing more than a recurring dream for decades until it became a message from The Fates that she was his one true love. Yet the dream was not recurring at all for that one time was actually the first time it happened. A paradox of lust and love. Some would say that he seduced her. Yet it was she who entrapped him. Due to this paradox, both and neither are true. Harmless, perhaps, outside of their romance, but every little paradox adds up into a cascade failure of existence. I think we'd rather avoid another one of those.

"Not to mention the future spawned when this counterfeit timeline was allowed to continue as Zeus saw fit."

"Wait," Henry interjected, "if there was a future before this almost apocalypse that destroyed that world completely, then does that mean-"

"I can neither confirm nor deny any temporal meddling by gods or mortals. But if Time Lords did exist, their duty would be to set right all the aberrations you people's actions have caused... or track down rogue time pirates who seek to disrupt what ought to be... or are just greedy assholes."

"Please!" Zelena begged. "I love her! I can be a good mother instead of a greedy arsehole!"

"You are incapable of love," Alecto challenged her. "You are, tragic as it may be, the result of a curse upon your despicable father's line and he perpetuated his wretchedness with you and you continued that line with your rape-acquired future blight upon society. You have shown little inclination to attempt to better yourself for anything but the pettiest of reasons. You have made no reparations to those you have harmed, including the boy whose father you murdered," she reminded with a gesture to Henry. "So Hera has only pity for you and that is why your life is being spared. No magic. No legacy to carry on your warped desires. Your womb will carry no more children. No potion or enchantment will restore the power you covet as it did before. You will remain here in this town, wretched in your ordinariness."

Zelena wailed inconsolably on the floor and Snow considered, "Must you be that cruel? She's just like my daughter. She couldn't help that she was created that way."

Alecto eyed Snow White with a cool expression and told her, "Have I not made myself clear? Perhaps you are a bit slow to understand after all of the brain injuries you have suffered. _That child should never have come to be_. Marian was dead in the past. To use her likeness to entice a man into siring a child is not merely rape of an unconscionable sort that merits punishment, but any child thus sired is a temporal aberration and its soul an innocent ripped from the natural order and life into which it was meant to be born, a life that will be filled with suffering, incapable of even the love your daughter can feel because of her sister. Would you inflict that upon a child? Would you inflict what she will become on the future victims she would revel in destroying?"

"I..."

"No, you wouldn't. Or the woman you used to be would not," Alect scoffed. "But the woman you are now? She wants blind mercy because of the selfish and careless meddling of two women with black hearts that she sees instead as teaching her hope. That is not hope. That is a foolish self-delusion to suppress your anger and grief at how you were wrong so you and your family can continue inflicting your virulent strain of corrupted charity and clueless nepotism on others. No _true mother_ would want to subject _any_ child to the wretchedness from which those two suffer.

"So I suggest," the goddess told the wide-eyed princess with a shrewd look, "you step off your self-righteous soapbox, Snow White, look hard in a mirror to see that you are very far from the fairest of them all. You are a hypocrite and a fool since trying so absurdly to merge your true and your cursed personality. The 'Snow White' you finally settled upon much too late is far more like the selfish, amoral little twit the Dark Curse turned you into for her amusement than the woman who truly went by that name. You should be beating your breasts in self-pity, not praising the inspiration of their spoiled milk."

Snow opened and shut her mouth, sputtering and Charming came to her defense, brandishing his sword. "I don't care if you're a goddess! No one insults my wife like that!"

Alecto waved her hand and the sword became a fish as she scoffed, "Ah, Prince Charming. I would not be so high-minded. Fate unaltered by the gods for you was death that day Regina cast the Curse. But Artemis liked you enough to convince Zeus to spare your life, to put you in that coma instead of a coffin."

Both David and Snow blanched at that.

"So count your blessings and know that having fangirls will no longer save you from recklessness," Alecto told him. "And remember your parents raised you to have compassion, but not without justice. Like your wife, you dishonor the sacrifices of your fore bearers by simply shrugging off atrocities in favor of homemade lasagna and imported rum. That manner of forgiveness does not make you heroes, it makes you pathetic doormats."

Alecto look at all of those assembled and scoffed, "Had Lady Themis given me such discretion it would be my great pleasure to inflict such suffering on _all_ of you hypocrites and brainless fools who not think you should be held accountable for your thuggery and all of the horrendous paradoxes you have created with your careless use of magic. I would have you forgotten by the sands of time for there is no moral to your pathetic stories other than to strive to not be any of you fairytale nitwits. But Hera will not permit it. So hopefully, you will live your lives now better than you acted out your useless stories. Happily ever after! Ha!"

The goddess' scathing accusations left all speechless. Save Henry.

"I have a question!" he blurted out as the goddess made for the portal. "Was that you that attacked us by the lake for trying to save Robin?"

"Ah, yes, I'd almost forgotten..."

"Eeeeep!" Henry exclaimed when Alecto transformed into a hideous black scaly creature with demonic wings, bug-like eyes, and really absurdly large breasts for no discernible reason.

Alecto shifted back, shrugging, "Mortals are far more willing to quake in terror before the hideous than the beautiful. Also, men - and some women - are quite easily distracted by ridiculously large breasts. Makes it much easier to apprehend them."

Regina snorted at that.

"I'd best depart," Alecto announced. "I would caution you that after the sun sets... and until it rises and sets as it should, you do not seek to travel to other realms and keep others from attempting to visit. Hope is a marvelous thing that can restore balance, but repairs must be done, paradoxes sorted out in a far more diligent manner than Zeus simply creating other worlds to shove all the mismatched puzzle pieces into. The Fates have much weaving to do. But Hera will keep the true intention of the bargain with Zeus and keep the worlds of the gods separate from yours from then on out, and we will work to see that all mortal souls in our realms find their final destination.

"So do not let your reckless mortality and wanderlust jeopardize this gift as your kind are wont to do!"

"We won't," Belle promised.

"Wait," Henry stopped the demi-goddess again. "My dad. Can you... before he moves on, can you tell him that I love him? That I miss him. And... I'll take care of Mom... And Geronimo."

"I will," Alecto confirmed before stepping into the portal that instantly closed up, leaving the empty elevator car.

"So..." Belle asked, "who wants burgers?"

"I could eat," nodded David.

"I'm starving, actually," agreed Snow.

"Can I get a hot fudge sundae?" Henry asked Regina.

"Averting an apocalypse does seem to warrant sundaes," she agreed, shoving her own heart back in and wincing at the dark emotions that rose up inside of her. Though not as dark as her sister's.

"I HATE YOU ALL!" Zelena wailed, sniffed, and put in rather pathetically, "I suppose I wouldn't object to some apple pie and ice cream."

* * *

Anna found her sister not far from where Geronimo was munching on weeds, sitting on the swing set in the little used park that Regina had built after tearing down Henry's castle. The genie-lamp inspired slide had play horses had rusted and been taken over by vines.

Emma was swaying back and forth with rusty squeaks, clutching a stack of yellowed paper, her expression set in that numb mask Anna knew well was the brittle calm before a breakdown.

A big part of Anna wanted to just leave her sister there. Like 99.9% of her. She wasn't good at this 'caring' thing. It literally wasn't in her nature, a nature created _not_ by nature but an insidious spell some asshole - she had her money on Neal's grandmother - invented and got spread around by greedy shit mortals who liked to fuck a lot. In a sense, Anna was only slightly more real in her origin than people made from a magic quill or a genie's spell, just because the magic triggered what a quirk of nature would otherwise... just with the caveat that the magic remained, ensuring that bunch of cells developed _wrong_ , developed with a broken moral compass from a pre-blackened heart. And that darkness fought against the absorbing of any light, the seeking of redemption for past wrongs and happiness that came from love rather than the pain of others.

It was not a particularly fun existence, and Anna could understand how it had driven Zelena to become such a crazy, fucked-in-the-head cunt. She'd killed her twin before birth without even knowing it, though it seemed that her mother had and tossed her out like trash, perhaps hoping the Black Fairy would take her to at least put her magical psychosis to some use rather than wolves tearing her to shreds. Anna had been spared that, and by ad hoc accounts, it seemed that her uncle wasn't particularly happy even as a wealthy prince, so perhaps missing out on a life of her own for thirty years and having to share a past with the sister she would have killed in the womb without destiny and a spell was really the best fate she could have asked for. And while Anna doubted that Emma would agree at the moment, maybe it was the best fate _she_ could have asked for too.

Emma didn't look up as Anna approached and took a seat in the other swing, just kept staring at the top sheet, a pencil and ink sketch of her first date with Neal, the two of them sitting on that Italian trapeze. Anna had those memories, hazy and disconnected as they were for her, bits and pieces of Emma's life that had been emotional highs and lows, that resonated with the little patch of light her sister had protected in her heart for all those years and Anna had spent the last few days torn between wanting to let the darkness swallow it and fighting the darkness back.

"I'm sorry you had to sacrifice your keychain," Anna finally broke the silence, getting a surprised look from Emma. "What? I'm observant. And not as dumb as Gold thinks."

"We're all still alive and Neal gets to move on, that's what matters," Emma answered with a shrug and flipped through the drawings, some of them fanciful ones of the life they could have had.

"And no one can question anymore that your love was true," Anna pointed out. "That it _still_ is. It stopped an apocalypse. Pretty sure people will write that down. Either way, Emma, you both loved each other, and you've still got that in your heart, with or without some cheap piece of tin."

"Somehow that makes it hurt even more," Emma admitted, fighting tears. "Turns out I hadn't accepted it fully how much I loved Neal, no matter how much I thought that I had. There was still a part of me that was holding back, that was afraid, because I knew it would hurt to lose him again. I think that's really why, even in that wish world, he was dead. Because it wouldn't be real, and I knew deep down that I'd always take a nightmare that's real over a dream that's a lie. Still, it would have been nice to at least know we could have had Tallahassee.," she concluded with a sob, finally losing the battle against her grief.

Terrible as she was at this sort of thing, Anna slipped an arm around her sister, the rusty swings squeaking in protest. Emma cried for a long time, finally pulled away when her eyes were red and her nose running.

"Here," Anna offered her a wad of tissues as Emma pushed her glasses up to wipe at her eyes.

"Thanks," Emma sniffled. "I'm sorry I messed up your jacket."

"I did buy it with your money, so, no big deal," Anna quipped.

"Right," Emma snorted after blowing her nose.

"You don't need a genie to know that, Emma," Anna insisted. "Or a book. Or even that keychain. This town still being here, everyone getting the chance now to write their own stories, fight to make their wishes come true, that's how you know your love could have done anything... even if that anything was something ordinary and boring like raising a nosey kid in a dumpy apartment in a swampy city that's actually not right by the beach."

Emma smiled at her. "Thank you."

After a short silence, Anna cleared her throat and began again, "I know I appear strong, but I'm not. And don't tell me you understand, because you can't. You don't know what it is to be... unhinged, to be... flailing about. Killian's the only one who can hold me together. And maybe that's not the kind of true love that fairy tales are written about. It doesn't save thousands of lives and it can't break a terrible curse and rebalance reality, but it saves mine every day. His love for me, it gives me a reason to keep fighting against my own darkness, the darkness that made me, to hold onto that little bit of goodness that's there because of you, that let's me feel something I shouldn't be capable of."

Letting out a breath, she concluded, "So, I know you don't like Killian, and you probably never will. But I wouldn't have him without you, so it would mean... a lot if my sister would be there, in about an hour, when Nemo, hopefully, officially, barring any kraken, hydra, and giant squid attacks or mermaid rebellions, gets us hitched aboard the _Jolly Roger_."

Sniffing a bit still, Emma responded, "You're right, I probably won't ever like him. But also that I can't fully understand what it's like to be you. I guess we really can't fully understand each other. But you are my sister, and it doesn't change that I love you, and that, of course, I will be there to see you get your legitimate happy beginning... and then sail off into the unnatural sunset and leave me alone to deal with this crazy town of freaks and their old world laws," she amended at the end with a slight smirk.

"So, change the laws," shrugged Anna. "Maybe there's some kind of middle ground between letting everyone get away with anything with a slap on the wrist and a few hours of community service and locking all the murderers and crazies under the hospital. Well, personally, I wouldn't change locking up the crazies. But otherwise? Who knows what'll work best. This town's not dependent on a curse anymore thanks to you, so seems like a chance to try some new things. Even if you're not a savior anymore."

Emma blinked at that. It hadn't even occurred to her. She didn't feel any different. But if there was no longer any part of the Dark Curse left, if Storybrooke was just a town that had some unusual magic in it from another land, then did that really mean she was normal? Or as normal as the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming who had magic could be?

Instead, Emma asked her sister, "Are you saying that you're not going to contest my claim as Sheriff?"

Anna shrugged again and replied, "The bountyhunter thing was more my style. Kicking ass, taking names, breaking so many rules it's basically illegal in most of the country. Just bad enough to suit my taste without the risk of jail time. Joining a sheriff's department? That was _all_ you. Well, maybe a little bit me in upping the odds of bedding Graham, but the actual job part without sexual benefits, that was you. You're the good cop. I'm the bad cop, but the corrupt one that gets busted by Internal Affairs for abusing criminals and taking bribes kind."

"Well," mused Emma, "there goes my speech."

"You had a speech?"

"Yeah, I worked on it in New York.."

"Don't let the hard work go to waste. Lay it on me."

"I don't know..."

"You think I can't take it?" Anna snorted.

Emma rolled her eyes, then put on a lecturing tone, "You owe me for what you've done to my reputation in this town, Anna. So I demand you hand over _my_ badge and resign immediately! I can overlook the constant absences, the blatant disregard for rules and regulations, but your moral compass is broken and I point blank refuse to work with someone whose sense of right and wrong is as flippant as the weather! Someone who thinks _getting laid_ is more important than justice. You are unfit to be Sheriff. You have _no place_ in law enforcement!"

"Flippant?"

"That might have been Henry's suggestion."

"Well, that certainly was blunt in its cruelty," Anna told her with a snort.

"Sorry."

"No you're not."

"Yeah, you're right," Emma conceded. "I haven't changed my mind about any of that. You're my sister and I love you, but you're a shitty cop."

Anna smirked at that and handed over the badge to Emma. " _Was_ a shitty cop. Now I'm just a pissed off bride planning to take a _six month_ honeymoon cruise. Of course, that's assuming I can actually get married. Twenty bucks says Dad gets wasted before the ceremony."

"I'm not dumb enough to take that bet, Anna," Emma snorted. "Regina told me Henry was assigned to keep him from drinking before your last two."

"Fine. Fifty bucks says he threatens Killian with his sword and tries to get him to walk the plank before the end of the reception then," shrugged Anna and Emma groaned.

"Fine, it's a bet."

* * *

A much smaller wedding party in a mix of fairy tale and regular clothes gathered on the docks just before sunset, fresh off fighting evil for the umpteenth time.

"At least I don't have to be Hook's best man again," groaned Henry.

Emma smirked at that and nodded toward the _Nautilus_. "Ever gonna explain that little adventure, Kid?"

"Other than that I had a chance to let Hook die and chickened out because I thought you wanted to marry him? Not really," he sighed.

Slipping an arm around her son, Emma told him, "Well, heroes don't let people die just because they don't like them. And you don't have to worry about him throwing out your Pop-Tarts anymore."

"Yeah, the boiled mackerel was _nasty_. He's still annoying, though. And kind of useless."

"Well, your aunt thinks he's useful for something..."

"Yeah, I know what 'something'. I walked in on them once!"

"Ah, right, forgot about that," Emma grimaced. "I mostly blocked out all of... ah... that."

"I wish I could!"

Someone on board rang a bell to welcome the guests aboard and as everyone began filing up the steps Henry asked, "Do you think... if Dad hadn't died you two would have... you know... gotten married?"

"I don't know," Emma answered honestly. "It was losing your dad that made me realize how much I loved him still. I want to believe we'd have found our way back together, even if my aunt and her lady boner for Hook got in the way for awhile. But I don't know if we'd have gone the traditional route. It wouldn't have changed how we felt about each other, though. Or you."

"I wish I could have seen Dad," Henry moped, "talked to him one more time."

"I know," Emma grimaced. "I'm so sorry I didn't let you see him when we got here from New York, Henry. I was afraid. I didn't know how to explain that he wasn't the guy I'd thought he was without my memories, that I made you think he was. I was being selfish. And I'll regret that for the rest of my life. I made a lot of decisions out of fear that hurt you. And then my sister made a ton more that I couldn't stop. And I know all of that has left you with more on your plate than any kid your age should be dealing with."

"One less now, though," Henry reminded. "It was kind of a sucky destiny sometimes, but it made me special, you know? And now I can't add Dad's story," he moped. "Or how you met. Not that I'd want to anyway, since apparently all I've been doing is magically enslaving people or something."

"Hey, that's not your fault," Emma insisted. "You didn't know that. No one did. And we don't need to be in a magical book, Henry. Who says you can't write it down without a fancy quill? The pages are still there even if they're just ordinary words and pictures now. And you definitely don't need some magic destiny to be special. Believe me, they're overrated. You were an amazing kid long before you picked up that quill, and you'll continue to do amazing things long after it, Henry."

"You really think I'm amazing?" Henry asked with a suspicious look and his mother smiled.

"Yeah, Kid, you are. You have more hope than anyone I've met. You got me here to break that crazy Curse. And you can be whatever you set your heart and mind to. Which I know is all your dad wants. For you to never limit yourself, never give up. So don't let yourself get boxed in by any world," Emma advised. "By anyone's expectations. Or people saying you need fancy powers or titles to be important to someone or to do good in the world. What matters is that you feel good doing good, helping people who can't fight the good fight alone, taking down bad people who don't care who they hurt; not that it's written down or comes with medals and fancy titles. It's about what you do, the stuff you learn along the way, not blindly focusing on some happy ending. I know it might not feel that way around here sometimes, not the way this family tends to prioritize stuff," she amended, "but that's what really matters. Okay?"

"Okay," Henry agreed, still a little sad, then asked, "So... are you gonna get a house now or what? I know Aunt Anna wants you to watch her place, but I don't want to stay there with you. It's creepy."

"I'm not planning to live-in house sit, that's for sure with all the 'good for something' stains that would make a black light explode," Emma assured. "I don't know where I'll call home yet. And I think... I should probably try to work things out with my parents... and get a bit more cash in my bank account before taking out any mortgages. But I'll figure it out."

"Maybe we could even have a stable in the backyard for Geronimo? I mean, having him at Grandma and Grandpa's is nice and all, but it's kind of out in the boonies."

"Maybe you should petition Regina for that, Kid. I don't want to end up mucking stalls!"

The bride and groom appeared then looking suspiciously unkempt. Emma warned her sister, "You'd better not have been having a _Titanic_ moment in my car or this wedding will be followed very shortly by a funeral. It cost a fortune to get The Bug professionally cleaned to get your stank out!"

"Our stank?" Hook scoffed. "Have you any idea the cost of getting your horse's stank out of my cabin?"

He threw a sour look at Henry, "And don't pretend it wasn't you who let the mangy thing out of the hold!"

"Wasn't me. I swear. He's just a really smart and devious horse."

Emma bit back a laugh. "Still not getting a house with a stable, Kid."

"Was worth a shot."

"Come on, idiot!" Belle cut in, not looking very thrilled to be there and dragging Hook toward the aft of the ship.

"Sure you don't want to be my best man?" Hook asked. "I can push my brother overboard if you-"

"Stop looking at my breasts!" Belle hissed, giving him another shove.

"All right, everyone!" Nemo announced from the back of the ship by the wheel once Hook had joined him. "Let's get these nuptials completed so the happy couple can sail off into the... ah... sunset apparently. That doesn't look right. Anyway, then I can get back to finding the klepto mermaid who stole my ship's tableware before the father of the bride and best man stab the groom death for killing their fathers!"

"Oh, come on!" Hook groaned. "Low blow, mate!"

The wedding march began and Anna, dressed in a replica of her time trip ballgown and golden sandals emerged from the captain's quarters to join her parents and walk down a 'carpet' of pink rose petals to the ship's captain who'd given her his heart.

* * *

The ceremony was short and Emma watched from the docks as her sister sailed off into the sunset... and then got swallowed up by a portal along with the _Nautilus_.

"The sun is going to go back to rising and setting where it's supposed to, right?" wondered Snow. "Not that it isn't very pretty..."

"Well, that goddess seemed to indicate it would eventually," Gold interjected, leaning on his cane as he limped over from the boardwalk, the magic he'd used to heal his old injury undone by The Apprentice's handiwork.

"Whatever normal is around here," David mused. "Not sure we've seen that yet."

"Let's get this over with," Regina spoke up, "before some idiots finds some magic beans or enchanted unicorn dung or Ariel shows up with an enchanted spork."

Together, Emma, Regina, and Gold, combined their magic toward the setting mirror sun. The different colors combined to a shimmering white that briefly made the water glow and struck the barrier around Storybrooke, rippling through the town.

"It won't hold forever," Regina concluded, "but that should keep visitors out until the magic sustaining Storybrooke has solidified. We just need to make sure no stupid dwarfs try to _leave_ to get PhDs and destabilize things."

"I'll talk to them after the town hall meeting tonight just to impress the point," David assured. "And put up security cameras at the town line. Probably should have done that awhile ago."

"We'd better head back into town then. I'm sure there's a mob gathering to bombard us with questions," Regina said, leading everyone away from the water.

Emma was last. She watched the unnatural sun set and the stars come out, not sure if they were reversed to, but sure Neal would be able to tell her. She wondered if there were stars where he was now, if the sun would rise in the morning - if there was even morning. As long as he was at peace, his soul free after so many years of imprisonment, a life so full of misery and pain, then she supposed it didn't matter.

She'd felt his love for her in that final moment, when existence had been near its end, felt that he was happy, and for that moment she'd shared that happiness with him, one blissful moment when reality was everything it could be and nothing it had been, when even, maybe, she could have reshaped it with their love into the life they both wished had been.

But that wouldn't have restored the balance that was so long missing. It would have been selfish, even if they both deserved it. So she'd let Neal and that dream go, even though she would hold onto that moment of pure joy and love until she saw him again.

"I hope you've found home, Baelfire," Emma told the dark sky, blowing a kiss to the stars before turning to head back toward town and resume her role as Sheriff Swan, bringer of justice to the town of Storybrooke, Maine.

\- End Part 1 -

* * *

AN 1: Alecto borrows "time aberrations" from _Legends of Tomorrow_ along with some dialogue. I was sorely tempted to have her kill Zelena, but since Merlin hadn't yet fully assumed the role of Death, it just wouldn't work plotwise, so I had her wipe Baby Robin out of existence and take her magic instead. _Oops_! Emma's "speech" is from _The Flash_. And Anna's spiel about being "unhinged" is taken from Princess Margaret's words to her sister Elizabeth in _The Crown_ Episode 10. Bits of this and their previous conversation in Chapter 13 were inspired by Episode 8 and the overall relationship between the two royal sisters and their personalities (to some degree) as portrayed on the Netflix show. Elizabeth, like Emma, has a leadership responsibility that her sister envies while she envies her sister having what she perceives as a confidence in her won skin, charm, and wit that she lacks, that gains people's adoration for her as a person rather than reverence for her duty and what she represents. She's actually quite insecure and always feels at a disadvantage in her duty because her parents gave her no academic education, so she struggles to understand and converse with members of government on top of having to reconcile being daughter/wife/sister with being Queen, something her uncle, the abdicated King Edward VIII, likens to mythological creatures like minotaurs and sphinx that are part human/part monster and ever at war with themselves; I see Emma in her savior status similar to this, always picking duty even if she hates that she has to do it and that it may hurt the ones she loves. (And that in canon instances when Emma did such things, it was Emma's strength and conviction as a savior that over-powered her sister's selfish and individualistic nature). Elizabeth has also long been troubled that her parents called her their "pride" and Margaret their "joy" and it seems somewhat common knowledge in the family that Margaret was their father's favorite, no matter what their mother might claim, which just seems to reinforce Elizabeth's insecurities at being valued for what she can do, not who she is regardless of titles and duties. Anna, like Margaret, sees her sister as unsympathetic to her situation as the sister without any duty but still bound by its expectations and regulations, particularly in her love life; she is devastated when Elizabeth breaks a sisterly promise to support her marriage and as Queen declares that she must choose between duty to the Crown or love, the later which will be disinheritance and (at least temporary) exile like their uncle, simply because her lover is divorced. The difference here, of course, is that while Elizabeth seems to be heading down a path that further disconnects her from her individual self and her family, her own marriage in a rocky place because she did not side with her sister, I wanted Emma to be at a place where, like at the end of Season 1, she was essentially free of her savior status and back to a place where being Storybrooke's protector is a choice rather than inescapable burden, the absence of which means cutting out a part of and diminishing herself. Frankly, I think the show's choice in that regard is just one of the many choices in plot that have worsened Emma as a character, turned her into a plot device rather than a character with conviction and morals that chooses to be a hero because it's the right thing, not because it's demanded or expected of by some unseen hand of fate. So eliminating the Dark Curse and solidifying Storybrooke was a way to un-savior Emma by her fulfilling her duty rather than chickening out of it. And creating Anna, of course, was a way to MacGuffin out of all the atrocious choices the canon character has made since Season 3 both in present and flashbacks.

* * *

AN 2: So the season finale is over. It wasn't bad until the end there, Deputy Hook and the creepy Last Supper meal aside. But don't worry, 'Heathens' and 'tOBoM' will continue. Though I became uncertain the past few weeks of who West and that girl would be and so took a hiatus from writing, I was 99% sure they would be Henry and his daughter (I thought with Violet, but apparently that didn't stick and Henry just secretly wants to bang his mom so he has a thing for Latinas.) so it turns out I don't have to change much that I wrote with that theory in mind. I also thought Gideon might go back to being a baby and almost wrote that in. Jeez, these guys are predictable, aren't they? I was hoping they'd switch to The Wish Realm with Adult Prince Henry and the brat would be EQ's kid so I could just separate myself entirely from this shit Oh well.

Anyway, if you are reading those stories, here is a contingency plan I included at the beginning of 'tOBoM'. Even before the new casting, I kept The Alchemist's identity a mystery because I intended, if required, to have him be Future Henry and a Time Aberration like in the Legends of Tomorrow finale where they had to go back in time to fix their own time travel screw-up and were thus fated to be murdered in that past. So Henry in the future realized the mysterious evil was unleashed because of Zelena's time travel spell violating the laws of magic and unleashing a darkness not unlike Fiona's spell that would destroy reality, but not because of disbelief, rather accumulating paradoxes from the rewriting of the past and/or some contingency Zeus wrote into those world should someone try to change his plans.

He also discovered that her spell only destroyed the magical worlds because Zeus was using them as entertainment and his job as an Author was just being Zeus' pawn as he also learned his father was, trapped as the Lord of The Underworld so Fiona couldn't actually resurrect him and become as powerful as Zeus and take over Mt. Olympus; anyone would lose their optimism after discovering they'd been living a lie for like 15 years and left their father rotting in Hell to save Hook. It wouldn't help to realize everyone in the universe was basically an aberration that shouldn't exist, including you and your daughter, and that you helped to cement it as the only true timeline.

But worst of all, Future Henry discovered that his mother had an Evil Twin and that after years of being lost inside her sister the way his aunt was for 30 years inside Emma, because of Anna's curse and Emma no longer being a savior, Emma died never getting even a happy beginning. And because Neal was Lord of The Underworld, she couldn't move on with him even to a fake afterlife. Going back in time with the help of Hera, Henry realized, was the only way to fix things, but because of The Apprentice using a Time Remnant of himself to travel through time to help unleash that evil to destroy everyone (and presumably help himself escape from The Underworld), Henry ended up in a time after Zelena's spell and had to find a way to fix it there.

So the end of the finale and S7 do not exist in this universe. Anything that happened in it could be the result of multiple dumb Barry Allen like time traveling before Henry realized he needed Hera's help. I have zero intention of including Henry's love life in the stories. And even if he had an "epic true love" it was a fake love contrived by Zeus' rules not free will. I see Snowing as maybe being actual soulmates that Zeus either allowed to meet in life for creative reasons or that Hera and Aphrodite got to meet against his plan and many things that happened after were Zeus trying to recoup his losses and still tell the story he wanted/keep Fiona from becoming a god.

* * *

Other borrowed dialogue in this chapter:

"I'll take a nightmare that's real over a dream that's a lie." — Sara choose reality over getting her dead sister back using time travel and mystical bullshit, _Legends of Tomorrow_

"You can't just go back and change things like that. Time is sacred and it can't be changed to suit any one person's desires without causing harm to the lives of countless others." —Sara faces off with Merlin over a mystical amulet compass MacGuffin, _Legends of Tomorrow_

"I can overlook the constant absences, the blatant disregard for rules and regulations, but your moral compass is broken, my friend. I point blank refuse to work with someone whose sense of right and wrong is as flippant as the weather. Someone who thinks _friendship_ is more important than justice. You are unfit to be a CSI. Barry Allen has _no place_ in law enforcement." —Julian, _The Flash_

* * *

 **Before Part 2, please read "Heathens", a brief story interlude that explores Neal and Merlin's quest that occurred concurrent to the battle against The Apprentice. I have a few more chapters of that to post before this story continues.**


	15. Unwritten

Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

Note: Apologies for the long wait since updating this story. My muse has decided it's summer vacation while the rest of me has to work. I had really intended to get a good chunk (or all) of this up before the damned show got back into production, but now I admit that I'll be probably be lucky to get it out before the show is back on the air, subjecting audiences to "Hyperion Heights", which may be the new town and an homage to the address of the original Disney Studios, but to me "Hyperion" will always be _my_ city's sewage treatment plant, and in that respect the name is fitting, because _Once Upon A Time_ is full of shit!

* * *

 **The Outstanding Balance of Morality**

 **(revised edition)**

 **PART 2**

* * *

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

UNWRITTEN

"Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch."

― E.B. White, _Charlotte's Web_

The day after the world didn't end the residents of Storybrooke went back to their lives. It wasn't the first crisis they'd faced, not even the first apocalypse, and with the benefit of it being resolved (again) by true love that magically repaired the damage, everyone could continue on with their plans more-or-less uninterrupted... or delayed by the previous few days of fear at being wiped out of existence by a crazy wizard hell-bent on thumbing his nose at the gods of Mt. Olympus with all magical worlds stuck in the middle as collateral damage.

Thankfully, Merlin's rogue resurrected apprentice was defeated and any backlash from Zeus was also averted thanks to Hera, which left life reverting to its normal post-apocalyptic routine of everyone gathering at the Town Hall where the Mayor and Sheriff outlined the latest crisis aversion and future magical disaster preparedness. Each near end of the world did bring with it some lessons on things better to do or not the next time around. In this case, the "not do" was hold large events with privacy wards in the event of crazy smart sorcerers slipping in with a magic containing hat loophole that allowed for easy kidnapping and getaway.

Not that anyone had really wanted to attend Snow White and Prince Charming's daughter's wedding given the near apocalypse that followed her first one... or had wanted to attend it in the first place given the entire town knew the bride was the target of an insane counterfeit fairy who was even more ticked off at her after the schmaltzy singing business which meant wedding reception song-and-dance numbers were only going to enrage her further.

But no one wanted Snow White moping - she was a real pain in the ass when she was depressed - and considering the groom had threatened to literally skin alive for revenge his best man's grandfather hours before blathering out vows about giving up revenge for love that no one but his dumb-ass bride and her family and closest circle of followers believed, the residents of Storybrooke knew better than to refuse invitations extended by their most prestigious royal family. The lot of them were psycho magnets (or psychos themselves) on a good day, and making them moody just seemed to increase the likelihood of family related calamities spilling over into the town in the form of evil wizards, witches, fairies, curses... and whatever Peter Pan was supposed to be. Petulant man-child looking for immortality to one-up his ex-wife? Pedophile who liked to diddle kids' unconscious dream selves? Misunderstood pixie-dust brain-damaged druggie involved in a weird but consensual gay relationship with that Felix kid... which would technically be considered statutory rape since he was really a forty-something year old man magically de-aged by a Shadow that sounded like Marilin Manson? No one was quite sure on that one.

In any event, Storybrooke's residents had endured the (interrupted) wedding and answered Mayor Mills' summons to the post-apocalypse meeting to get the recap and take advantage of whatever free therapy sessions they could get out of Dr. Hopper on City Hall's dime. Archie Hopper was in his usual optimistic mood, returning to the podium to wrap things up with a bit of overly indulgent inspirational mumbojumo.

"I know you're all still uncertain of what this means," the curse-degreed shrink imparted to the crowd. "Will life really change any more than it did after the Black Fairy's defeat? What does it really mean not be ruled by a predestination that had nothing to do with the sort of fate or destiny we were led to believe in for so many generations if we didn't know that game was rigged until now? I can't answer that. But I encourage you all not to hold onto that past. Focus instead on each new moment of a world free from tyranny, real or existential. We are officially a land of godless heathens, making today the first day of our societal adulthood. I, for one, am slightly terrified and equally excited, and trying not to break into _Hamilton_."

* * *

After some groans from the audience, people stood up and filed out, the cacophony of their individual conversations fading away until only Regina, Emma, and Archie remained to clear the small stage so it could be re-purposed for an upcoming bingo tournament. Life in Storybrooke really did go on regardless of the recurrent magical disruptions. The majority of the town's residents couldn't appreciate that life was just more complicated for those more central to the ever-reoccurring action, whose lives tended to be irrevocably altered with each of these magical disasters.

Emma had taken the biggest hit this time around, what with the Evil Twin revelation that meant she'd lost a good two years of her life, subverted into her sister's subconscious as the identical blond went about using her identity, completely unaware that she wasn't Emma Swan... or Emma Jones as she eventually came to be and now _Anna_ Jones.

Anna was off on her second (first really trip-wise) honeymoon, leaving Emma back in the position of Sheriff and with all her messes to clean up while putting back together her own life after a lengthy hiatus. A hiatus during which her son went from a cheerful video-game-playing tween to a full-on moody girlfriend-having teenager who wouldn't be caught dead playing video games with his mother and probably had hair growing in places he definitely wouldn't tell her about, not when the progress they'd made, however magically contrived in New York without their full memories it has, had been pretty much undone by her sister; Anna turned out to have been a worse mother than many of Emma's foster parents which left Emma to earn back trust _she'd_ not actually lost in the first place.

As such, a grimace crossed Emma's face as she watched Henry depart with her parents glued to his phone as he'd been most of the meeting, nothing like the little boy who'd beamed up at her when she made her speech years ago in her bid to become Sheriff. Maybe if she'd been more honest with Henry about her past then, he wouldn't have easily accepted that the deadbeat glued to a pirate was still his mother. She'd hoped he would at least be proud of her reasserted dedication to her job as Sheriff in contrast to self-absorbed bully with a badge her sister had been, but she hadn't even gotten a fake compliment for the ugly brown uniform she hadn't worn since Graham's funeral (aside from the few laundry days she wore the shirt) and thought would help separate her from her sister in the minds of the community. That was what her sister had reduced her to, having to wear ugly clothes and dealing with an apathetic child because she'd taken Emma's homage to Cleo Fox and turned leather and jeans into the uniform of a dirty cop who arrested people for interrupting her dates and threatened to murder kidnapping victims for ruining her weekend Netflix and Chill plans... all of which Henry had either been cool with or just shrugged off and left Emma unsure of how to get through to the kid... and more than a little peeved at the people she would have counted on to not put all kinds of self-destructive crap in her son's head if she'd been in any conscious position to delegate that duty to anyone.

One of them, Archie Hopper, cleared his throat, turning Emma's attention back to the business of emptying the stage. He also gave her that disarming expression which seemed more a calculated part of his occupation than genuine incredulity as he remarked, "You know, I never realized you'd warn glasses. I'm always a fan of spectacles."

Emma didn't bother with false congeniality of her own as she adjusted her tie clip on the uniform she hadn't worn since Graham's funeral and pulled back her lightly curled hair so it wouldn't catch on the podium as they moved it.

"Since I know you're not trying to flirt with me, Archie, I'm going to guess this is your way of trying to get on my good side," she told him after stowing the cables, "and encourage me to make an appointment and talk about all of this, but that's not gonna happen."

"I know you've never been one for sharing," Archie conceded. "You and your sister have that in common, but-"

"That's the thing," Emma cut him off, shaking her head. "That's about the _only_ thing we have in common other than the physical identical' part and even that's suspect considering my sister started looking like a drug addict within days of doing her Marty McFly impression. But you didn't notice. Or if you did, you didn't act on it. You ignored all the physical signs and wrote off all the shitty behavior as a positive or not your business unless it disrupted your life. And that's not even the worse part."

Shaking her head, Emma concluded, "You treated Henry and knew he had issues with an adoptive mother who ignored him and mistreated him emotionally, but you applauded his birth mother turning into equally obsessed deadbeat for a man who belittled my son's worth and appropriated his father's legacy. f I can't get past my family being supportive of that with all their personal guilt excuses, do you really expect me to just excuse away that a _psychiatrist_ who should know better?"

The former cricket's expression fell. "I suppose I shouldn't have expected you would be easily forgiving of my severe lapse in judgment."

"No, you shouldn't," Emma told him sharply as she stepped back from the podium. "I'm not my mother. Or my sister. But it's not a matter of forgiveness, it's about trust. I don't trust your judgment. Not with my life-is-not-a-fairytale priorities. That might be how Anna wants her life to be, the rules she wants to play by, but my life is in this world," she explained, "where justice is a real thing, where bad guys don't get rewarded just because someone slaps a 'true love' label on their ass, especially when they still act like one. Maybe everyone else here wants to keep on accepting that kind of bullshit, and maybe that means I'll never be one of you, but I'd rather have self-respect and teach my son to be a good person than drink that Kool-Aide."

"Of course," Archie conceded, his expression filled with regret. "I never meant to cause you or your family any pain, Emma. I know that I let you down. I let your sister and your son down as well. And for that I truly am sorry and I hope one day we can at least be friends again."

Once Archie had gone, Regina, who had been stowing the flag which represented the combined Enchanted Forest kingdoms of Storybrooke and rather looked like a toddler's attempt at _Game of Thrones_ fan art, remarked with a smirking expression, "Ouch. Tell him how you really feel, Miss Swan."

Emma gave her a sour look at the formal manner of address before replying, "He sucks at his job. My parents have excuses. Dumb, selfish excuses. But I get them. Dealing with family is complicated and that leads to fucking up sometimes. A psychiatrist encouraging their emotionally unbalanced patient to marry a murdering, raping, emotionally manipulative and abusive psychopath they've only know a few months and who also happens to be their kid's step grandfather who still wants to murder their kid's actual grandfather should be grounds for at least suspending his fake-ass license."

"Oh, I wasn't going to defend Hopper," Regina shook her head. "He _is_ an awful therapist. The Blue Fairy had to get some chump to help ensure you grew up alone, that all her spewings about love songs to encourage your parents to give up even without them tagging along would amount to nothing more than an cringe-worthy, off-key ballad belting off past-its-expiration-date magical notes that did little more than unfreeze a group of individuals who were ultimately completely unimportant to the whole 'Final Battle' idiocy... but I suppose made for at least a mediocre penultimate episode for season one thousand and whatever of _Once Upon A Time_ , longest running soap opera on the Mt. Olympus Oracle Network. Immortals do seem to love trashy spectacle weddings."

Emma gave a snort at that while propping the American flag next to whatever the town flag was supposed to be. "Yeah, I'm sure Zeus held an orgy viewing party."

"And everyone else probably would have after the wedding reception if it wasn't curse interrupted," Regina amended with a roll of her eyes. "Everyone clearly 'celebrated' the eventual victory in any event with the amount of babies being born. Hopefully, they'll be too exhausted by that last batch to make another brood of apocalypse brats. I'm just relieved your sister had enough sense to go behind her pirate's back and get that birth control implant."

Shrugging, Emma imparted, "That might have been more my influence in retaliation for Anna's unrelenting insistence that I couldn't be a mother when I was pregnant with Henry than her own intentional deception. She went to Archie about her conflicted feelings. Didn't make an appointment. Just barged in on someone else's time, kicked them out, bitched and moaned, and then unintentionally misinterpreted Archie's crap anyway advice like always.

"Sometimes I really hate my sister," sighed Emma, grabbing the Maine flag.

"In that I can sympathize. Both _my_ sister _and_ yours. Although usually more mine than yours... accept when yours has along her pirate blow-up doll brought to life by the wish of a skanky sea witch," Regina quipped. "Speaking of man-child puppets, I noticed one skulking outside earlier."

"Yeah, I saw him too. August probably thinks he has another chance to get in my pants now," Emma groaned. "He's such a sicko."

"Certainly a morally bankrupt opportunist with addiction issues," Regina agreed, gathering her own papers from the meeting. "Considering that, it's probably a good thing my double snapped your parents' true love sapling before it grew up to be cobbled by some orphaned virgin hermit into another whoring, gambling, child-abandoning, half-assed guardian angel' who is so transparent in wanting to bang the woman he abandoned as a newborn that even a syphilitic, narcissistic pirate with half a brain wasn't fooled."

"I do feel bad for him about Geppetto, though," Emma admitted of the carpenter who'd passed away earlier in the year. "He never really got the chance to not be an asshole of a son after Gold aged him again. Or before, I guess, considering as a kid Henry said he was stealing lunch money and taping 'kick me' signs on his teachers' backs. How the hell did his Wish World version turn out so... not an asshole?"

"How did your Wish World parents _and you_ turn out to be simpering cowards and Robin an unrepentant criminal who targeted poor people?" shrugged Regina on the way down from the stage. "It was genie magic. Unreliable, overly dramatic nonsense."

Emma followed. "Yeah, that's about what Anna said."

"Your sister's not entirely an idiot then," said Regina, amending, "And neither are your parents, no matter what you may think. They just want things to finally settle down instead of this... regular upending of their lives, and I can't blame them for that."

"I'm _trying_ not to blame them," sighed Emma. "I know Anna's time travel played a role in altering everyone from the versions of them that I knew last time I was myself and I have to accept that I can't reconcile everything in this timeline with the one I'm from. But accepting that doesn't mean I want to accept the stuff about people that... sucks _now_ when I know they could be better, _were better_ , because just a few things in their lives happened differently."

"Your parents were never perfect, Emma," Regina reminded. "They made plenty of mistakes, did plenty of selfish things before they even met."

"I know that," Emma conceded She wasn't deluding herself. They could be selfish and oblivious, but... "They just... never seemed to be as _intentionally cruel_ before. They didn't do things for spite or revenge. At least, I never knew them to. And they weren't as... I don't know... dedicated to fairytale conservatism with its outdated, sexist, classist, nepotism true love shit. I remember them fighting _against_ that, or at least not preaching it as the path to a happy ending, especially the one they wanted for me.."

"I can't imagine they were ever _against_ the traditions and values of The Enchanted Forest," Regina returned. "Fake memories, fake lives, they don't leave an impression that strong, one that lasts very long anyway."

"Not against it in general, no," Emma conceded, "but it's like they went from accepting their daughter to wanting to change her - change me. At least the things I remember being said in Neverland, I get that my mother's disappointment came from not getting to raise me, that I was never going to be their little girl, always have failures in my past that couldn't be erased by hugs and hot chocolate, never be the person they imagined which made them sad and no one wants to have to hold onto that sadness. They wanted me to be without the scars I carried and realized that being reunited wasn't going to erase them.. But it felt like they accepted that, understood those scars made me who I am and were proud of that person even I was never going to be their little princess, always be a bit damaged, a part of me always that orphan like Pan said."

Emma let out a deep sigh and continued, "So this 'forget past scars' bullshit you all sang about at Anna's wedding feels like a personal insult. And I know it was my asshole sister who started that, but I look at my parents in this world and it's pretty obvious that they're happier with my sister's version of Emma Swan than mine. Or at least the pre-curse-revealed version," Emma lamented and shrugged. "So now Anna will fight against her curse, and they'll be proud of her for that. Then she'll find a cure and stop being a compassion-challenged jerk and just be the flowers and lace loving princess housewife they want for a daughter. And where will that leave me? The geeky jeans-and-flannel wearing spinster sister who's finished her savior-ing and would rather live in a car than a castle."

"You'll still be their daughter, Emma, the one who was meant to be without some magical contrivance, savior or not," Regina argued. "And as for where it leaves you, I'd say wherever you want it to. My mother certainly didn't accept me having a normal life and she definitely didn't love me as much or as selflessly as your mother loves you. I also wasn't strong enough to reject her ideal version of me for my own, and now... now I'm left with a few scraps of that person that I didn't entirely burn to become what she wanted, what she made me want. You're stronger than I was. And you're not as alone as you think you are."

Shrugging, Regina amended, "And who knows if your sister really wants any of that fairytale world more than this sexcation of hers? If she was free of that curse, her priorities might change. Perhaps being what your parents want is nothing more than her best revenge against you. Isn't that essentially what Anna said after destroying my kitchen?"

"Maybe," Emma considered.

"I suspect no matter what either of you choose," Regina told her, "it will disappointed your parents in some way. That's how the world works. Children disappoint their parents simply by not being perfect carbon copies of them. And your parents in particular, like my mother, have ridiculous expectations. Which is also something I used to have regarding Henry, but I'm trying to become less like my mother, more accepting and encouraging of whatever Henry wants to be."

"I wish I felt like my opinion on that mattered," sighed Emma. "I don't know if I can recover the relationship I had with him. He's grown so much and changed in some ways I'd never have approved of... no offense," she concluded with a wince.

"None taken," Regina returned with a grimace of her own. "I know my past has... colored Henry's views. I just want what's best for him, but I didn't always understand what that was, which has left him with things to unlearn... and makes what happened to you partly my fault."

"Besides just not offing your sister when you had the chance and then keeping her power necklace instead of destroying it?" quipped Emma and Regina smirked.

"Yes, and that, I meant, if I had been a better mother, if I had raised Henry with all of the love and affection he deserved, I doubt he would have been so easily accepting when it seemed that his other mother was ignoring him and his well-being in favor of her lover, changing herself for said lover while telling him not do exactly what she was doing. It's my fault that Henry didn't see himself as the most important part of your happy ending," Regina explained. "It's my fault that Henry wasn't raised with a healthy concept of his self-worth or even the slightest idea of how basic _platonic_ relationships work. He was lonely and friendless and got all his ideas about the things I failed to teach him from a book that's basically a badly written screenplay to entertain a divine man-child. And then I made it worse by getting caught up in those ideas myself. Together with your sister, I sent him mixed signals, hypocritical advice in our words and actions. Perhaps he would have realized something was wrong if I had done a better job as his mother before he found that book."

Shaking her head, Regina concluded, "With the Heart of the Truest Believer, Henry should have seen that woman who bought that ugly house and married that syphilitic pirate wasn't you when no one else could. But my... coldness in the way I raised him, I think, stunted that part of his belief so it was easily twisted by the whims of the gods. But maybe that's what they always wanted..."

"Along with giving him an Oedipal Complex," added Emma, "so the moment he saw a Latina chick his age his puberty went into over-drive meaning my dark-hearted sister could use his tears... and then from over-drive to forgetting condoms existed so he could knock up your cousin who is also _his_ cousin so Zeus could fuck with the natural order of magic and true love and unleash more smoke monster nonsense with another displaced soul brat of morally questionable conception."

"I'm well aware that by withholding affection from Henry for much of his childhood it's possible that he is attempting to experience what he was unable to get in our relationship through romantic relationships to compensate for or subvert some resentment he still holds," groused Regina.

At Emma's raised brow, she explained, "I might have had to turn to Archie to try to figure out that mess with my doppleganger and Gold before Zelena fessed up to a lust potion prank. And I will certainly make sure Henry doesn't go back-packing across The Enchanted Forest after graduation, If I have to follow him through a portal and drag his ass back here. Legal adult or not, he is not succumbing to his biological parents' propensity for underage procreation if I have anything to say about it. I am still too young to be a grandmother."

"You're already a great grandmother."

" _Step_. That doesn't count. I was practically a child bride when I was forcibly married to your creepy _inbred_ grandfather," Regina insisted.

Finally pulling on her coat and scarf, Regina concluded, "In any case, this is the family you're stuck with, Emma. And we may not be exactly as you remember us, but that doesn't mean we're strangers. Your sister and her pirate stepped on a lot of butterflies. One small change leads to another and another, that's true. But it doesn't mean any of us are different people than the ones you knew, just that... different aspects of our potential might have been encouraged - or discouraged -more by different events, different relationships, being subjected or not to different spells. A few facts, a few pages of our origin stories - as Henry would call them - are different here, but we still started out in the same places, we still carry all the same scars up to that point when our worlds diverged, and some of the same ones after. So _your_ parents are still in there. Maybe you just have to be the one to bring them out."

On that advice, Regina walked past her and out the doors, leaving Emma alone in the hall, looking again at the empty stage where her life had officially begun in Storybrooke. She felt just as uncertain now as she had then about her place here. One step forward. Two steps back. That seemed to be the story of her life.

With a sigh, Emma pulled her own coat on and stepped outside in the night air.

The stars were out, too many of them to be natural, lingering echoes she supposed of the magic that had tried to mesh all the worlds together, and she wondered for a moment which stars were from which worlds, which superimposed skies belonged to Wonderland or Oz or some place she'd never heard of. But that thought passed as fog began rolling in from the marina, the usual fall weather that had left her feeling cold and damp the few nights she'd lived in her car before Mary Margaret took her in.

Emma missed her roommate and friend and the few but good memories shared there before her life was turned upside down. Now... now she was glad her parents didn't live in that loft anymore. As she passed the building with a new family visible through the windows, her heart ached for what had been for a moment, but that quickly turned to bitterness for all the family moments her sister took from her in that place, both those which Emma had shared with her parents and son and seemed to have never happened now and those that Anna had made using Emma's identity, usurping a destiny and relationships that didn't belong to her and forcing upon Emma ones she'd never want. Anna stepping on all those butterflies and into her life, building Emma's nascent relationships into stronger, deeper ones, but on her terms, Emma was already sure, would make all of the 'do overs' her parents would try feel desperate and too late, tarnished by misunderstandings and malice.

She remembered now what Gold had said one of the times she'd checked on him in the hold of the _Jolly Roger_ when he'd been poisoned. Quite out of it, he'd revealed that August had tricked him, impersonated Baelfire, and that he'd believed him long enough to bare his soul, to plead forgiveness. So when he finally did reunite with his real son, no matter how much he still felt those things it was like the moment had been stolen, corrupted, and though it was surely at the determent of things with Baelfire, that moment of raw honesty and everything it might have been could not be repeated. There was anger, bitterness, resignation in his tone and in the brown eyes he'd passed on to his son - and grandson as he'd spoken.

Emma hadn't really understood what Gold had meant then; it had seemed silly that he couldn't just repeat whatever he'd said to August. But now she did. With Henry, she couldn't unsay the hurtful things her sister had, erase how those things had changed her son even if she could change his opinion of her back for the better. With her parents, _every_ moment they shared felt like it would be shadowed by Anna's impersonation. Next year they could give her a cupcake with a blue candle and sing "Happy birthday to Emma" and mean it, but _they_ would feel guilty for when it wasn't her and _she_ would feel robbed of the genuine effort that had gone into that and couldn't be replicated.

Ultimately, it came to a simple fact: She was a woman without a world, an orphan all over again. She felt it deep down in her magic. The gods could spare her from winking out of existence with the rest of her timeline and transplant her into its present as though it never had a past version of her apart from her sister who had taken control. But they couldn't make her fit like she belonged. Yes, _her magic_ had solidified the town's existence, magic from the world, a universe, that no longer was, and so that feeling had faded considerably, but still it didn't quite feel right. Whatever power lingered here in the (poorly named) Land Without Magic's foundation upon which Storybrooke was built and could be summoned into a fountain in New York City wasn't quite the same as that interwoven with her Storybrooke, her Manhattan.

Gold said magic would have developed into a different harmony after Zelena's time spell. And like any magic user who'd moved to a different world, it would feel strange to Emma at first, even for a long while. But magic adapted. Hers would. That feeling would fade into a distant memory eventually and this world would become as real and entwined with her magical core as the one from which it came.

And to the rest of it, the living and breathing and family dinners - she would adapt to that too.

But right now it still hurt too much, the loss of everything Emma had gained or been so close to obtaining to put much effort in.

Emma knew with a heavy heart, as she slipped behind the wheel of the Bug and adjusted the Empire State Building air freshener hung from the rear view mirror, that she was never going to have the life she dreamed of in a motel room in Portland, Oregon... or even the one she let herself just begin to consider in the apartment down the street with parents her own age and an eleven year old son who'd been adopted by her formerly evil step grandmother.

Those happy endings would forever be a ghost in her backseat and an unsung song in her heart.

* * *

(2 months later)

The white plastic stick mocked her, bright and shiny against the gray of the cot's wool blanket. If it wasn't for the lack of a denim jumpsuit and the twinkling of the string of Christmas lights woven through the bars on the open cell door, Emma might have gotten entirely lost in a distant past when she was seventeen and facing this revelation utterly alone and terrified.

Maybe she already was when she wandered from the station's bathroom to the jail cell she'd once slept off drugged cider and a concussion in to wait for the timer on her cellphone to chime.

Unlike the last time around when she was young and ignorant, Emma had been putting off peeing on a stick for weeks, assigning every other explanation under the sun for the familiar symptoms. After all, how the hell _could_ she be pregnant? Biology finding a loophole in a condom was a _lot_ more probable than even magic finding a way to get knocked up by a dead man so it seemed a complete impossibility that she could pregnant... unless she wasn't but her house was haunted by an Incubus.

In another lifetime, Emma would have thought it utterly absurd that her first reaction was to smear herself in snake bile, which was apparently like Luminol for Incubus spunk, because that possibility seemed far more likely than conceiving a child _in The Underworld_. But she wasn't a host for an Incubus spawn that would burrow its way out of her abdomen _Alien_ style, so that had left her grasping at straws... and finally snagging a home pregnancy test from the medical supply cabinet at the Sheriff's Station.

Emma continued to stare down at the stick in her hand in shock and bewilderment.

Maybe the test was wrong. Maybe there was some other weird magical explanation for the nausea, the frequent urination, the achy and fuller breasts, not to mention her nipples darkening to the exact shade she remembered the last time she was pregnant - that some pervert lesbian peeping tom (tammy?) in prison had pointed out along with her never having made use of a maxi pad during her two months of incarceration... which she'd then chalked up to stress and to being seventeen so maybe her boobs were still developing. Dumb excuses to avoid the obvious, the simplest explanation.

At least the Incubus thing had been vaguely plausible given the house she'd bought was previously occupied by a deranged evil wizard who'd murdered his way out of Hell and could have brought a minor imp or demon along. But since that wasn't the case, and given the evidence in her hand, the odds were strongly favoring a more mundane explanation that some people would call a miracle and in this particular case maybe it did sort of qualify, but right now Emma just felt torn between fainting and throwing up the left-over jelly doughnut from the breakfast box in her office.

She was craving the damn things now even though she'd always been a bear claw girl. Just like the last time around, though she couldn't exactly satisfy that craving in prison. Plus there was the recent aversion to mayonnaise and the smell of fish from the Cannery had her trying not to heave and avoiding the marina as much as her job would allow. It was a good thing that boiled-mackerel-loving pirate wasn't around for the holidays. She was pretty sure his "cologne" that seemed to be a particular mix of sweaty leather and fish oil would have her puking her guts out in front of her family who _definitely_ did not need to know about this... at least not until she'd 100% confirmed that the universe had thrown this particularly ironic complication into her lap... or rather uterus.

 _How the fuck is this happening to me again?_

The sound of voices startled Emma badly, nearly causing her to drop the test. At the last second she stuffed it in the pocket of her Department issue winter coat, shoved her glasses on, and plastered on a smile to greet her parents who had on the ugliest matching Christmas sweaters she'd ever seen.

"Ready?" David asked.

"As I'll ever be," Emma replied, swallowing back her nausea and exiting the cell.

"I brought hot chocolate!" Snow offered, holding up a cardboard carrying of extra large cups from Granny's meant to sustain them through an evening of caroling. "This is going to be so much fun!"

It was a tradition that went back to Mary Margaret's extramarital affair with David Nolan and which Emma hoped would not also lead to witnessing them having sex in the back of her mother's Suburban. She'd declined joining in that year, too depressed at being separated from Henry. The following Christmas she was in New York with Henry and never asked if they did caroling in a Flying Monkey infested Enchanted Forest. The year Anna went along, of course, so did Hook and instead of singing they spent the entire caroling route with their tongues down each other's throats dry-humping against mailboxes.

As much as Emma hated caroling and wanted to just curl up in bed and forget the world for awhile, this was an opportunity to do something with her parents that made them happy - that her sister had shown complete disregard for and ruined as a family outing the year before. It was definitely still a work-in-progress, figuring out her relationship with these two people who were but also weren't her parents, trying to find the qualities in them that had shown so brightly before and now seemed obscured beneath the not so nice ones exaggerated almost like when they were cursed. Sometimes they seemed more like Mary Margaret and David Nolan than Snow White and Prince Charming... at least in the selfish and careless ways. Not so much in the other personality traits that Emma actually missed, the ones that had made her feel closer to her roommate and empathize with the man the school teacher pined for. That part of her life was years and a literal universe away, gone forever but in her memories.

Sometimes it felt like most of her happiness existed only in memories. But Emma tried to take her father's advice from that beach that morning, the day everything really started to go to shit and never turn back. She would try to make good memories where she could, and maybe they would add up to being happy.

So Emma kept her fake smile plastered on, grabbed a cup of cocoa, and followed her parents out into the literally freezing night to sing about virgin births and sleigh bells... while thinking about a round-yon-not-virgin with a bag of stolen goods for a belly and the jingling of a convenience store bell.

* * *

AN: Don't you hate it when it's Christmas in stories or TV shows airing in the summer? Don't worry, this story won't dwell long on any holidays... or it will be winter before I get the rest of this thing written and posted! I'm sorry about the terrible cliche of knocking Emma up, but there was a storyline from my sadly abandoned 'Paradise' sequel that had to be scraped because I am too slow to write and it essentially ended up too similar to the Gideon mess with Emma in place of Belle, but I wanted to explore some of that even with a different plot and throw Anna into the mix to explore exactly who she is considering her curse-catalyzed origin. Assuming I even get things written/edited that far, I may or may not detour/flashback to an Agrabah adventure for Anna and Hook; A&E promised one for Captain Swan that never happened, and regardless of my hatred of _that_ ship, I do kind of enjoy the more overtly mutually abusive and manipulative relationship of what I suppose I'll call Captain Mirror-Swan. What does Anna being _Anna_ now mean for their dynamic? Is Hook supposed to be Anna's inspiration to be good now, and if so, is he up to the task and is that even what he signed up for? Does Anna still want a husband who's trying to better himself for her or was that all Emma's influence and she'd rather have Hook back to his full pirate self? Were they both a bit too hasty to re-commit? And if so, what desperate and dangerous choices might either one make as they try to hold onto their original "happy beginning" while fighting the dark sides of their natures? Also, isn't it about time there's another literary pirate who is totally badass instead of the pussy that was Blackbeard _and_ a vicious sorcer _ess_ whose story isn't just a plot device or a prop for Hook's "redemption"? I have an idea for Sinbad and Shahrazad teaming up as the revenge-and-conquest-seeking Big Bads for the second half of Part 2 that could be fun, but I'll only flush that out beyond a brief expositional flashback upon Anna and Hook's return if no one's interested in exploring Agrabah's _One Thousand and One Arabian Nights_ themed region of Fairytale Land.


	16. Night Patrol

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for what sounds like a very lame and unimaginative Season 7.**

* * *

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

NIGHT PATROL

The sound of hail pelting against the roof on a frigid New Years Eve morning drown out the sound of retching in the upstairs master bathroom of the small red bungalow at 42 4th Street. With a groan, Emma glanced up at the growing water stain in the ceiling above the toilet before vomiting again.

After she was sure the nausea wasn't going to lead to further puking in the toilet where she tried not to think about Merlin's ex-apprentice taking a dump - yes, she had bought the old creep's house - Emma got up off her soar knees, flushed, brushed her teeth, and stepped into the shower hoping the warm water would ease away the remaining queasiness.

This recent addition to her morning routine of worshiping the porcelain goddess was certainly not one she'd expected or enjoyed adding to the one she'd resumed after a few years of existing outside of her own life thanks to her twin sister. But, apparently, theoretically, some actual goddesses must have decided to pull one hell of an ironic prank on her. At least she wasn't in prison, so there was _that_. Or still merged with her sister, which in retrospect was actually worse than prison.

Being able to see her own reflection looking back after wiping the fog from the mirror was a great relief after years lost to Anna's morning routine of sucking off her emotionally abusive and generally useless husband, twisting her hair up into a ponytail while swallowing her mouthwash like that wasn't akin to drinking rum, and giving no thought to the ghost of a woman in the mirror with the sickly reflection that suggested drug use or terminal illness.

Leaving her hair down, Emma applied a touch of make-up (she had given up the false lashes and mascara overkill from her "date night" bailbonds con get-up that she'd exhaustingly maintained those first few months in town while competing with her son's more naturally attractive adoptive mother), put on her glasses, and returned to the bedroom to dress for another day as Storybrooke's sheriff.

Emma now tried to do that by actually dressing _like a sheriff_ in contrast to her original bountyhunter get-up borrowed from Cleo Fox to which Anna had supplemented additional odd articles of clothing resulting in a style Emma called "Scandinavian milk maid at a Hell's Angels tea party impersonating that kid from Breaking Bad." It was a weird mix of embroidered florals and lace, leather jackets, and beanie hats. Occasionally, Anna swapped out the leather jacket for a quasi-blazer thing with, of course, embroidered flowers, and so ended up looking like an early 1960's folk singer. Emma, thankfully, was not self-aware during any of those fashion choices, but unfortunately she did have Anna's sartorial memories along with the rest, some clearer than others... and that included her continuing to wear leather jackets, not as an homage to Cleo, but because Hook liked to fuck her wearing nothing but a leather jacket.

It kind of ruined all of Emma's leather jackets for her, especially the red one that she'd loved so much. She hadn't been able to bring herself to burn it along with Anna's wedding dress, and it probably wouldn't have mattered to Anna if she had since her sister didn't have the empathic capacity to understand why Emma had brought it and wore it in the first place; she presumed it was "armor" that she could transform into a superhero cape.

Anna Jones was no superhero. She was more of a novice villain. Emma Swan, though, she knew she wasn't a superhero of any degree. She was barely a hero most days. But she could at least try to enforce the law, and the uniform was part of that renewed promise to the citizens of Storybrooke.

The brown and tan uniform wasn't the most fashionable. The tie was stupid and the waist was too high. And it still had a faintly musty scent from all the years left in the Sheriff Department's lockeroom after she'd refused Graham's demand that she wear it. She'd worn the shirt a few times on laundry days but had only worn the whole thing only for his funeral, making some sad joke in her eulogy that he had to die to get her to wear it.

After buttoning the shirt, noting with a grimace that it was getting a bit tight in the bust even with a sports bra to go with the too-snug waist, Emma headed downstairs to the kitchen where her son was frowning deeply while taking Pop-Tarts out of the toaster. It wasn't that Henry disliked Pop-Tarts; he actually loved them, but he was being punished for an incident several days prior - and he wasn't going to sneak those double chocolate cavity makers past her this morning.

"You know you're baby-sitting your uncle tonight," Emma told him, snatching the Pop-Tart from the toaster before he could take it and handing him a banana. "And you are going to finish that book report. Got it?"

"Yeah," Henry groaned and slumped into a chair.

"Hey," Emma stated him with a stern look. "I know you're pissed off at us for going hard on you. But I'm not letting things slide in this family, especially stuff like this, and Regina agrees. This is what you get until you can prove that you understand why what you did was wrong and that you won't be doing it again until you're mature enough to deal with any unforeseen consequences. Got it?"

"I get it," Henry grumbled. "And I _know_ I apparently screwed some stuff up in a future that's not gonna happen. I'm also not the Author anymore. _And_ I don't have a disgusting step-dad and a deadbeat birth mom and their bratty spawn to want to get an entire world away from as soon as possible either. I'm _not_ going to fall through a portal to The Enchanted Forest and knock up my thirty-something cousin, which is totally gross. I mean, she'd be like your age and you're _old_. Clearly that hypothetical me was desperate or on drugs or just really emotionally and psychologically screwed up by being surrounded by heroic rapists and murderers with weird age discrepancies. Plus, I mean, all the women in The Enchanted Forest do wear corsets so all they have to do is sneeze and their boobs probably pop out, so-"

"So, you are not touching another boob until you are my age," Emma cut the cheeky brat off, "unless you take this seriously. I want to keep you from doing things you'll regret because some not so hot role models the past couple of years have taught you some nasty habits - or not taught you about the things you shouldn't do. I want to help you be the best version of you that you can, Henry. No one ever did that for me, and look how my life turned out? I want better for you. I want better for both of us than you being the victim of a failed upbringing and me having to _Being John Malkovich_ my sister's life as a scumbag's brood mare. It sounds like we were both fake fated for crappy endings, and I want you to be able to recognize real true love when it finds you, and to hold onto it, because I couldn't and didn't and now giving you your best chance at that is my happy ending."

"I know, Mom," Henry sighed, looking sad. "I wasn't trying to disappoint you. It just..."

A car honked, Regina arrived to pick him up, and Henry cut himself off. "I gotta go. Have a good New Years Eve. Don't be too hard on Leroy for whatever he pees on."

Emma watched her son go, just thankful that she'd been on night patrol and her sister's house was the most convenient place to stop in to relieve _her_ currently overactive bladder.

She didn't want to dwell on the matters of a teenage son at the moment, however, when her mind was preoccupied with a potential newborn arriving at the same time Henry was free of the distraction of school. Emma didn't want to think about having another baby either, so instead she pulled on her boots along with her coat and an oversized department rain slicker and headed outside into the gloom of sleet with a side of heavy fog that hugged the coastal Maine town this time of year and had nearly driven her crazy that first miserable holiday season of Thanksgiving through Valentine's Day.

Emma also didn't want to think back on the extremely awkward gathering that was this year's Thanksgiving. Or Christmas for that matter, the caroling included. New Years Eve, at least she had to do night patrol, so she could get out of joining her parents at a party and then spend tomorrow in bed with Netflix , crossword puzzles, and junk food forgetting for a few hours her problems and responsibilities... and aggravations.

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" exclaimed the insane garden gnome statue that had apparently been enchanted as security measure and refused to accept Emma as the house's new owner.

"Give me the paper, you little shit!"

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" it snarled at her and resumed chewing on the paper's plastic covering.

Not in the mood to fight a lawn ornament for a periodical that was mostly boring fluff, Emma left the thing to its meal and headed to her car parked at the curb. She couldn't use the driveway because the house _also_ came with an insane car that had parked itself in the garage after Gold parked its owner in his own magic hat and was prone to spewing motor oil on intruders and letting itself out at 3 AM under a full moon to race its shadow around the block.

Needless to say, Emma had gotten the house cheap. There was also the fact that while other than the overgrown yard it had looked well-kept during its inhabited days, but most of that was due to magic that the old geezer had used to transform it from its Dark Curse ascribed role of Storybrooke's crack house... presumably using that wrinkled nutsack wand of his or some other magical device he'd brought along to counter the "no magic" rule that had seemed conveniently circumvented whenever needed, whether it was Regina altering people's routines and controlling them with their hearts, Ingrid stealing memories, or magical doorways to Minnesota appearing in the freak'n woods.

Emma had stopped trying to make sense of the arbitrary magical rules of this town, or in general. Maybe the gods were responsible. Maybe it was just fucked-up nonsense not worth getting a headache over. She didn't have magic lessons with Regina this week, so she could not think about that either and just focus on getting a cup of Granny's hot chocolate.

Granny, bless her angina-afflicted heart, was already putting together some cocoa with cinnamon sticks as Emma made her way inside and hung her slicker by the door. Given the inclement weather and the quasi-holiday, the diner was less crowded than usual at the breakfast hour, which was a relief. Emma was rather tired of the pitying looks that had become a staple since she got the table scraps of what her sister had made of her life. It was better than hatred and she wasn't looking for adoration, but it stung.

"You look like you could use one or two of these," Granny greeted her, sliding over the hot chocolate as Emma took a seat at the counter. "I missed assembling these, you know. I thought maybe you were just humoring Henry until he switched to coffee. Your mother never wants to waist the cinnamon sticks, but the powdered stuff just doesn't look as good."

"Thanks, Granny," Emma smiled at the older woman whom she'd gotten the impression was a bit lonely since Ruby had moved to Oz.

"New Year's Eve pancake special, dear?"

"Just eggs over easy and toast," Emma shook her head.

"Here I remember you loving my pancakes. Why the sudden aversion?"

"Because my sister loves them and loves making them before, after, and during what she calls making love and I call contaminating the kitchen with her STDs."

"Ah," Granny answered, making a disgusted face before tacking the slip of paper up above the short order window. "That does explain the leering looks Hook makes whenever I mention pancakes. Although that also seems to be his default expression."

"Resting misogynist prick face, yeah," Emma snorted and then sighed. "Those two are so disgusting. I'm afraid to take the department's black light to their house after using it at the station. Hell, their skankiness might have become its own magical entity and rise from the broken drywall, ceiling tiles, and linoleum flooring in the town dump and rampage through Storybrooke giving everyone herpes."

"That would certainly be one of our more terrifying monsters," agreed Granny before inquiring, "How go the renovations?"

Emma sipped her cocoa and shrugged. "Within the crap budget and the week Regina gave me, as good as you'd expect. My father has the Dwarfs 'volunteering' to finish painting my office today. Although it might just be Leroy looking to preemptively gain favors so I won't arrest him when he pees in the City Hall flowers tonight. Either way, it would be nice to actually get new furniture instead of having to bleach down my sister and her deputy's obstacle humping course."

"Maybe Regina wouldn't be so stingy if you hadn't taken a ball-pin hammer to your office, including the door," Granny reminded and Emma groaned.

"The door was an accident and it's not my fault that my attempt to fix it with magic made it worse. My sister's complete lack of training other than being the Dark One has left me playing catch-up in the sorcery department while no one cuts me any slack, like I'm supposed to be a magical prodigy because I managed to ward a shop and translocate a coffee cup years ago."

Emma stirred her cinnamon sticks again and frowned. Much as she hated her sister most of the time, Anna was right to be pissed off about all the expectations. And she was actually around the past couple of years to learn how to deal with that, to try to live up to that.

"People seem to think I should have just... gotten all the training and skills Anna had by osmosis or something since she got that from the past Dark Ones. Maybe I should have, but I didn't, so I'm starting from scratch and it sucks," Emma complained. At the very least, it might have been nice to get the magically corrected vision, though maybe she'd have ended up getting Anna's herpes as the price.

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it, dear," Granny encouraged. "You managed that coffee cup rather quickly as I recall. Perhaps it's just a mental block. Going back to being uneasy about magic and angry at the situation it put you in. You overcame that once before when your family and the town needed you."

"In a different life. A literal different universe," sighed Emma. "Sometimes I wonder if after being gone so long and a universe removed from the life and the people I was just getting used in my memories and magic means I'll never feel like I've got my life back or fit in here. Right now I'd settle for feeling like everyone doesn't look at me like a failure."

"I'm sure they don't. You saved the town. You-"

"Broke the Curse. And then basically did nothing in between then and now," Emma pointed out. "Yeah, maybe it was my savior magic, my goodness, that forced Anna to step up and not be a total selfish bitch twenty-four seven, but she was still the one wielding the magic, defeating the bad guys... or being given credit for defeating the bad guys while the people who actually did it were snubbed, because that's how my family rolls.

"I really am sorry about how my parents treated Ruby by the way. They were jerks to her even in my universe," Emma concluded.

"Oh, they never intentionally ignored her. I think Ruby knows that," shrugged Granny. "And I think you know that even if they seem different, the people you remember are in there somewhere."

"That's what Regina said."

"Well, for once then, I'd say listen to the former Evil Queen," Granny replied. "She would know, wouldn't she? She became a truly horrible person, but her good potential was still there. It just took certain people and circumstances to bring that out. And who better than you? Forgiving them might be hard, but better you work this all out while your sister is away. Remind them who you are, and by doing that, remind them who they wanted to be - not just who they became in your timeline, but the best versions of them who wouldn't have been 'jerks' to a long time friend in any universe."

Emma let out another sigh. "I know you're right, Granny."

"Good," the old woman smiled as she set down Emma's plate of eggs and toast.

Emma just smiled thinly and ate her breakfast, glancing out the window and at the neon clock occasionally to gage her time against the weather to make it to Storybrooke General.

Her stomach was feeling queasy again by the time she'd finished and Emma put some cash down on the counter while hoping she didn't throw up her breakfast on the way to the hospital.

"Thanks, Granny. I really don't know what I'd do without you and your hot chocolate."

"Things will get better, dear," the old woman reassured. "And if they don't, I'll dust off my crossbow and encourage people to stop behaving like idiots."

"I'll hold you to that," Emma chuffed and headed out into the cold and the wet.

* * *

Storybrooke General was fairly quiet in the early morning, just after shift change, so Emma wasn't expecting to encounter anyone she knew as she walked through the front doors and headed toward the currently empty front desk. So, of course, Mr. Gold rounded a corner while she was waiting and there was no time to hide behind a fake potted ficus to avoid the awkward impending social collision with her son's grandfather, not the least of which was having no idea still how to address the man.

Did she call him Mr. Gold or just Gold or Rumplestiltskin? 'Rumple' was definitely out. She never had been able to find a first name for the pawnbroker on any city records, not that she would use if it she had... while she actually also had no idea what his original surname was... or her mother's for that matter, now that her mind wandered off on that tangent; they had to be the 'House of' something, but if her parents' doormat was anything to go by, they'd decided to pull a Windsor and change it to 'Charming'. Emma was just fine with them rebranding their family from her mother's parents who sounded like a misogynistic imbecile and an ambitious cunt falsely colored as perfect do-gooders in the memory of a spoiled, insular little princess who until recently never reflected back on her childhood and upbringing through the perspective of the grown woman who'd been branded a traitor and lived as a bandit among the peasants her family had long neglected fighting the enemies her parents made through the apathy and cruelty of entitled royalty.

"Penny for your thoughts, Miss Swan?" Gold drew Emma from her long-winded and jumbled musings as he converged with her in the waiting area.

Shaking off those cobwebs, Emma answered, "Just trying to figure out if my family's been the heroes or the villains of stories back home."

Shrugging, Gold replied, "Well, everyone is the hero of their own story, but I suspect the old saying is true that one either dies a hero or lives long enough to become a villain. At least if one aspires toward heroism as an occupation. All of the monster fighting takes its toll."

"Nietzsche, huh?" Emma recalled. "To fight monsters you have to become one."

"I certainly did," Gold reminded. "As did your sister... although one might argue she was predisposed toward becoming a monstrosity from the moment of conception. She was certainly welcoming one into her bed.

"Speaking of, here for a follow-up, I presume?" he asked with a slightly raised brow. "I understand some of those diseases Anna acquired from her pirate are antibiotic resistant."

Clearly Whale had been blabbing again, Emma scowled, but it was as good a cover story as any since she actually did need to get regular syphilis tests for the next year. "Yeah, Hook is the Typhoid Mary of STDs, apparently. Not sure how else he could have survived three hundred years without his dick falling off. Whale seemed pretty confident that I didn't get anything by association, but better safe than discovering spirochetes have eaten half my brain."

"Indeed," the pawnbroker chuffed. "I'm sure Whale would love to get the pirate in the new MRI to see how much he has left."

"There's a new MRI?"

"I was just checking that everything is in working order considering I paid for the thing," Gold explained. "Thankfully, the shipment of new equipment arrived just before the near end of the world and our temporary isolation. Belle's situation enlightened me to our outdated standard of medical care. Whale may be a fine doctor, but science is limited by technology and ours was of the same era as that Pong game at the arcade."

"You know what Pong is?" Emma asked, surprised.

"Henry may have dragged me there once or twice during sporadic attempts at bonding when your parents and sister were too preoccupied to notice him violating their familial restraining order regarding unsupervised time spent with my grandson," Gold stated, his expression tight with aggravation.

"I'm sorry about that," replied Emma, and she really was. "My sister's a bitch who just wants to spite anyone Hook hates rather than do what's best for Henry and my parents seem to be serial hypocrites with a pretty nonsensical view of heroes and villains and what constitutes family around here. You should have gotten to spend more time with Henry. He definitely could have used someone in his life who knows that relying on magic and trying to defy its laws is dangerous. Not to mention, sometimes I think you actually have more respect for women than both Hook _and_ my father."

Gold snorted at that and answered, "Ah, yes, I heard about Henry's... dalliance with Violet. Quite a scandal about town. Henry has always wanted to help others, but sadly he's either been given none or very poor instruction on how to do so. Such ignorance and misinformation is sure to result in the occasional world-enslaving fountain portal and topless teenage girl. But I wouldn't consider castration just yet," he quipped, amending, "I don't think the lad is as far gone as his predicated future fate under your sister's continued parenting and the magical degradation of our counterfeit universe. There's still enough time to get the boy counseling for his Oedipal Complex and exposure to your sister's depraved and abusive marriage to save him from succumbing to the incestuous statutory rape of a pathetically old sequel Cinderella cast of the particular ethnicity to fit his depraved subconscious desires - under the illusion of true love.

"Henry now has the same free will as anyone," Gold continued, "to make his own terrible romantic decisions under the delusion of destiny, and poorly chosen as those may be, without the influence of the gods there is surely far less deference given to incest and one's mother issues resulting in attraction to one's mother and seeking a substitute for the affection she withheld... or father as it may be in Regina's case, though she might like to believe it was all just her sister's pranking. I'm sure there's some nurture-related generational dysfunction that she passed on to Henry in that regard, but some exposure to a few dirty magazines following the demise of his poorly begun love affair with Violet should broaden his horizons enough to diminish the odds of bedding his elder cousin."

"Way to let your inner romantic out, Gold," replied Emma with a snort.

"I've never been one. Neither are you," Gold deduced. "Your sister is the hopeless romantic like your parents, even if her parameters of romance are as off-the-mark as her moral compass. You're a realist, Miss Swan. It's one of the things I appreciated about you when we met. A realist I can work with. A hopeless romantic is generally hopeless in planning out anything of consequence. Unfortunately, realism is viewed as a deficiency rather than a useful quality in our world. It will always keep us a bit on the fringes. But it's also where the power lies."

Emma's brows lifted. "Really? Because I don't feel powerful. My magic still feels out of sync and I'm having control problems. Anna never seemed to, and you'd think it not even being her magic and her carrying a curse that contradicts savior magic would have made it even harder for her. So, you know, being a realist trying to learn how to teleport does feel like a big deficiency."

Gold gave her one of his patented 'stupid' expressions that he reserved for when he thought people were being myopic as though everyone should be as well-versed in magic as a centuries old sorcerer.

"Of course your sister would have easily overcome that hindrance," he stated. "She forced the magic out as is her nature. She used brute force to draw on what was not hers, that which she could never make hers. It may seem easier, but it's also exhausting, which is why she burned out quickly, easily defeated by every magical foe she faced. And it tends to make one more prone toward misuse of magic and addiction to dark magic."

"Which is now part of me instead of just borrowing my sister or the Dark One," reminded Emma.

"Dark _potential_. Not the same thing, Miss Swan," Gold corrected. "The _potential_ is the balance, the equilibrium, that keeps the good from turning into a different but no less dangerous arrogance and imposition, the sort the Blue Fairy fraudulently bandies about as some ultimate pure intentions. Having the bad thoughts, the impulses, are necessary. It's acting on them that begins the slippery slope. And you're far too good _and_ leery about magical consequences to follow your sister's path.

"Actions and consequences matter to you as much as the intentions. You're also not an addictive or weak individual," he amended, "prone toward unhealthy infatuations, self-destructive behavior, and choosing what is easy _because it feels good_. You have better self-control. Perhaps not by much, but enough. And that's the difference between a true savior and someone just pretending because they got called up to fill a role they were never meant to play."

"One I barely got to," Emma stated.

"Exactly. You have had very little time to play your role," Gold nodded. "In the beginning no change ever feels normal. Time allows for that familiarity, for the old to transition into the new. And your magic repaired Storybrooke and will heal the other worlds, restoring the balance that time travel destroyed which should lend you some stability. In time you won't feel so displaced, and having been turned into the Dark One, restored from death, been excised of my curse, and reassumed an altered version of it, I know a thing or two about feeling off kilter, like the world is just a bit out of step with you."

"I hope you're right," Emma sighed.

"I am," Gold confidently replied. "As for Henry, I wouldn't think the worst because of one bought of teenage hormones. He doesn't have any need to flee a house decorated in STD-infected bodily fluids or any adorable half-sibling replacements with congenital syphilis vying for attention, so he's not so apt to go looking for his own story in another realm.

"You really _should_ get the boy therapy for his Regina-related mommy issues, however, before it does escalate into an unhealthy fetish and drags some poor woman into this family's parental psychological problems."

"Yeah," frowned Emma while the 'half-sibling' line stuck in her head, increasing her concern. "I know."

"Well, I'd best be going," Gold concluded as the nurse finally returned to the desk. "Best of luck with your exam."

Emma just nodded before making her way to the desk. "Emma Swan. I have an appointment with Dr. Whale."

The woman in a crazy 1950's nurse outfit tapped at a new computer and then answered, "You're scheduled for an ultrasound and physical exam in Obstetrics. If you need to pick up anything from the pharmacy, it's-"

"Down the hall to the right," Emma finished for her. "I'm familiar."

"I suppose you are from your sister's medical file," the nurse quipped. "We could never decide on whether to call her 'Skanky Swan' or 'Jezebel Jones'."

Upstairs Emma found the Gynecology & Obstetrics department and the exam section that Anna had frequently visited. Emma hadn't had the "pleasure" of any annual exams here by Whale or the nurse practitioner who reminded her not to use the restroom until after the ultrasound. Her only visit to this floor was to the Delivery wing to wait for Ashely Boyd to give birth.

So, naturally, as Emma was sitting down to pretend to read long expired magazines a very pregnant Ella waddled in with a jumpy toddler wearing a pink tutu.

"AUNTIE EMMA!" Alexandra shrieked in delight, bounding over to scrambling into Emma's lap, nearly spilling her cup of water and leaving her in something of a panic.

"Alexandra Ashley Boyd Hermann!" Ella exclaimed with a cool look. "What have I told you about jumping on people in public? And about being 'quiet as a mouse' at the hospital? You got to pick out your clothes today so you have to be on your best behavior. That was the deal!"

The toddler clambered off Emma's lap and sniffled. "Sowy, Mommy. I fowgot. I just miss Auntie Emma!"

"I know you do, sweetie," Ella told her, "but remember I told you that your aunt's real name is 'Anna' and she was just filling in for her twin sister 'Emma' who looks like her and had to go away for awhile because of a magic spell that witch Zelena cast. And now while Aunt _Anna_ is on vacation with Uncle Killian, her sister Emma who helped me when you were a baby is Sheriff again."

Alexandra pondered this for a few moments, nodded and asked Emma, "You're Aunt E-Anna's sister? How come you're wearing those dorky glasses and poop colored clothes?"

"Alexandra!" Ella snapped, flushing pink. "Go play over in the toy area!"

The little girl shrugged and bounded over to the corner filled with toys and picture books for young children brought along by exhausted mothers.

"I'm so sorry about that!" Ella groaned as she eased into a chair. "I keep explaining every time she sees you on the street, but there aren't exactly a lot of twins in town to help it make sense to her. The only one was the Evil Queen and I don't think that's a good example to use, especially when Anna will be dealing with the 'Evil Twin' stigma when she gets back."

"I don't know how much stigma she'll get for some magic beyond her control," Emma argued. "Feels more like I'm the one being scrutinized, dorky glasses, poop-colored uniform and all. Gold says being a 'realist' makes me persona non gratis. Maybe he's right. I told you once that there's no such thing as fairy godmothers. But it turns there are. I just don't think people should depend on them, which I guess puts me at something of an impasse around here."

"It might," Ella agreed. "And people like the idea of a lost princess coming to town and being transformed by the discovery of the wonder of the world they love and miss and a handsome husband into one of them."

"And they don't like as much the idea of that princess being happy with not being a princess and trying to transform _them_ all on her own, to show them that maybe their world is wonderful as they think," Emma continued for her. "Yeah, I get that too."

"I'm sorry it's hard for you," the other woman told her. "But you are right that there are a _lot_ of things about our world _not_ to love and maybe it takes someone who doesn't want to just join the club to fix those problems and make us all better."

"Yeah, that's what Anna said," Emma grumbled.

"I know. She practiced her speech when I was helping her pick out a not-blood-stained dress," said Ella. "I thought she should throw in some Steinbeck. 'And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good'. But she thought that was taking it a bit too far. And that I was being judgey."

"You read Steinbeck?"

"Archie has a book club," she shrugged. "I think it's to cut down on his patient load by using books as therapy. Anyway, Anna might be more inclined to accept the status quo of our birth world than you are, but I don't think it's that she agrees with any of it as much she kind of pathologically wants to be accepted and held in the high regard befitting her station as a princess even if the means to achieve that are absurd and ultimately self-destructive. It's an Evil Twin Curse thing from what I understand. Your uncle. Zelena..."

"And you're still her friend because...?" Emma asked, genuinely curious.

"Because even though I know it was your influence that put justice before vengeance, that prompted Anna to pull me away from doing something stupid," Ella replied, "Anna _listened_ to it. I want to believe all of those moments helped Anna learn how to care about others and do good for the sake of doing good and not the rewards. Maybe that's false hope, but I owe that to her because you _both_ have helped me get back _and keep_ my happy ending. _And_ because it's the right thing to do."

Emma gave the other blonde princess a look of surprise at her thoughtful answer and Ella laughed a little. "Oh, I know what you're thinking, Emma, and it's okay. I know I'm a bit of an airhead. I always have been. It probably didn't help my prospects back home being an illiterate klutz. I like to think my mother would have encouraged me more than my stepmother, though, at the very least. But it's no wonder those gods wanted to rewrite my story with someone new from what I understand. They didn't do a very good job with me. I was spineless and desperate, I tossed out my morality to get a ball gown and married the first man I danced with because he could get me out of a life I hated. Not that I don't love Thomas. I do. More than I thought I'd ever have the chance to love anyone, so that luck was on my side. But he's a far better person than I am and has suffered for my selfishness and foolishness while I've had to grow up a bit from the girl I was when we met.

"So... perhaps that's another reason I've supported your sister's romance," Ella amended. "I'm far from a pirate, of course, but I did basically stalk and deceive the man I wanted to marry because I wanted that life more than I understood any of it. And when I did come to understand it, to realize the mistakes I had made and how it would hurt the ones I loved, I regretted it and wanted to be the person Thomas always thought I was, that he fell in love with. So, I wanted to believe that Killian could be that for my friend... and now, maybe Anna has to be that for him, the good person he believed she is, that he was redeeming himself to be worthy of."

"Or they're both just jerks," Emma argued. "Jerks can fall in love too."

"Or that, but I'm holding out hope," Ella insisted. "I didn't for things to get better with my stepsisters and I regret that now."

"Emma," the nurse called out.

With no time to further re-evaluate her opinion of Cinderella, Emma bid her farewell and followed the nurse into the exam room where a gown awaited on the stirrup-equipped exam bench.

Trying to psyche herself up for facing any possibility, Emma changed into the gown and laid down on the table with the too-thin pink sheet covering her lower half.

She remembered the drill, just in her memories it included getting out of shackles and a prison jumpsuit and being cuffed to the stirrups. And not worrying about parasitic demons impersonating fetuses. And there were also weird half-remembered dreams of what she assumed was that could-have-been/already was future undone where she was never separated from her sister and forced to endure Anna's bliss of popping out babies for her pirate that drove her son away into the arms of an older woman and surrogate for his suppressed confused feelings of emotional abandonment and psychological manipulation by Regina as a young boy manifesting in an unhealthy sexual attraction and romantic infatuation with his cousin who was a re-imagined version of the woman out in the waiting room like some comic book multi-verse crap-fest where there were a half dozen different Flashes and Peter Parker no longer had a murdered uncle - or any uncle at all.

She really needed to find something better than Henry's comic books to read on night patrol, Emma considered just before Whale entered the room pushing a cart and looking cheerful.

"Emma, you're looking pale and terrified this morning," the doctor said with his usual terrible bedside manner, earning a glare.

"I'll get right to it then," he said, holding her chart. "I ran the presumed human fetal DNA in your blood sample against yours and according to the lab results you are the mother with 100% certainty. I also ran it against Henry's sample from his visit last week for the drug and alcohol test and while a sibling's sample can't provide 100% accuracy, it's certainly still good enough to _scientifically_ rule out any demonic or other humanoid magical creatures from being involved in this conception and tentatively confirm your unborn child's paternity, baring any unknown evil twins running amuck in his father's family."

Emma swallowed thickly. She'd been expecting that from Whale's voice mail, but still... "You can't be 100% sure though, right? Magic can mess with medical tests."

"Which is why after the matter of Belle's magical-metal-poisoning-sheilded brain tumor I had a team research that material Pan discovered that was being used by 'The Home Office'," Whale explained, "and have reproduced it to shield the entire lab and all the new medical equipment, not to mention the security cameras, against spell tampering. Which is probably why your 'sister' experienced those migraines following her last couple of visits. The anti-magic wasn't strong enough to split you two apart, just give the one with a physical body a splitting headache. So..."

Whale turned on the fancy machine he'd pushed into the room. "This is a brand new 4D ultrasound that will let us have a look and see for certain what's boosting your HCG levels and floating the presumed DNA fragments of a dead man around in your blood!

"Try to relax," Whale instructed, smearing goo on Emma's abdomen. "And not wet the bench. You can use the restroom as soon as we're finished. Aaaaaaaaand here we are," the doctor stated. "Looks like a perfectly normal human fetus. Good size, strong heartbeat. Placenta placement looks good. Some blood flow has already started so give or take what with the temporal discrepancies between this world and The Underworld, you're probably a few weeks from the end of your first trimester."

Emma hadn't looked at any of her ultrasounds with Henry, but now she didn't even think not to look, turning her gaze to the monitor that showed the black void of her uterus and a little white blob moving around in it with little flashes of red that indicated its beating heart.

Her own heart fluttered then. With relief and fear and just being fucking overwhelmed... but none of it as scary as what she'd felt in an exam room in Phoenix over a decade ago. She felt tears starting to form in her eyes and the image got blurry.

"You're sure?" Emma managed to choke out. "It's a... a normal baby? It's healthy? And... there's just the one, right?"

"Well, I can't tell you if it's cursed in some general way if that's what you mean. I can't test for that," said Whale. "But there's no indication of a twin hiding in there. As I said before, your part in that family curse probably ran its course with your first pregnancy, eliminated either by lack of magic or conflicting magic with your sister already carrying the curse inside you.

"Either way, this fetus looks perfectly healthy, so you can go pee now, and then we'll do the physical exam, I'll get you a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and send you downstairs to make an appointment for let's say... three weeks from now. Uteroplacental circulation should be fully established by then to get a look at the placenta, which if it's as strong as your mother's with her last pregnancy, should put aside any fears of abruptions later in the pregnancy requiring bed rest... which isn't to say you won't have to cut back in your third trimester, Sheriff. But we can put that discussion off for awhile and instead I'll give you a bunch of boring brochures on dietary guidelines, Kegals, childbirth classes, and birthing method options that will either fascinate or terrify you."

"I gave birth without any classes after twelve hours of labor cuffed to a bed in a skeezy women's clinic with a prison guard watching," Emma reminded as her shock subsided a little. "Nothing in any brochures is going to terrify me."

"Point," nodded Whale. "I'll print out a picture and get this machine over to Exam 2 for Mrs. Herman while you go make your bladder gladder."

On that note, Whale exited, leaving Emma clutching her hospital gown, her mind slowly emerging from shock and transitioning into amazement... then snapping out completely when she realized she was definitely going to piss herself if she didn't run to the bathroom.

* * *

The bad weather had moved out by afternoon and by nightfall the clouds began to clear and the stars had come out for anyone who wasn't in a nice warm house making small talk with friends and neighbors or curled up with a good book in front of a roaring fire with a nice mug of hot cocoa. Another front was supposed to move in before dawn, but for now everything was calm and boring. Or kinky.

" _And we'll be back after this commercial break to take more calls on the topic of romance resolutions for the New Year on WOLF 98, the home of the original party animal. Awooooooooo!"_

As an ad for Purbeck's shoes came on, Emma fiddled with the dial on the Bug's radio. The police car would have been more comfortable with a better heater, but someone had puked up a bad mix of magic Wonderland mushrooms from a broken condom and Jägermeister in the back seat, the result of which was the car shrinking down to the size of a matchbox car after they barely got out in time, and that was supposed to take a few days to wear off since Regina wouldn't pay for the potion ingredients to counter it.

In regular towns cops busted pot houses and meth labs. In Storybrooke, people grew literal magic mushrooms and cooked pixie and posy pollen into something like ecstasy or heroine. A lot of posies were collected during the height of lurking evil with The Apprentice and Neverland mermaids had been pulling pixie flowers out of their fishy vages for awhile, so the closed borders hadn't done much to stop Storybrooke's small but constant drug problem. They'd originally assumed that "Alchemist" guy was their town's Heisenberg looking to get rich out of cooking new fangled magical narcotics, but he'd turned out to be a red herring actually heralding in an apocalypse and if they did have a resident drug lord, he'd been keeping it on the down-low since the world nearly came to an end.

As such, Emma wasn't expecting any drug lords to be out and about on a frigid New Year's Eve. Holidays tended to be pretty low-key in Storybrooke anyway, so a raccoon tipping a trash can would probably be the height of her evening if she ignored the few instances of public urination by partygoers walking from said parties to their cars or residences. Whale was the only one who ever threw a party where more than one person got wasted, and they usually weren't magic users, so a brawl over an affair or a work issue would probably be the worst altercation there and that wouldn't even warrant calling her.

Moving through the band of static and garbled, half-legible CB radio conversations from truckers on the "new" Route 6 and air traffic going into the small commuter hub in Bangor, Emma was just about to resort to her phone for music when she found "Charley's Girl" coming in surprisingly clear where there was usually nothing but dead air, the song drawing to a close.

 _"You're listening to KLYC, twelve-sixty on the AM dial. Celebrating life this New Year's Eve by cruising the Oldies from Portland to Hillsboro and Vancouver. Our next request goes out to-"_

Sucking a breath, Emma switched off the radio before risking "Only You" somehow turning up as the next late night request.

"Stupid ionosphere!" she grouched before picking up a flimsy sonogram from the dash, squinting at it in the darkness, not that she could make out much in the daylight when Whale had printed it out that morning. But she still felt a connection that was amazing. And infuriating. And heartbreaking. And amazing.

Emma had been running the gambit of emotions in a loop since this morning.

After her fear and anger and confusion with her first pregnancy, with the months of trying to distance herself emotionally from the life growing inside of her and her renewed fears this time around, Emma hadn't really expected to feel such an instantaneous and fierce surge of protectiveness for the little alien-looking thing on the screen with its giant head and tiny limbs flailing around.

She hadn't gotten emotional at all with Henry, not in a good way, at least. She'd felt numb during every ultrasound, like all of it couldn't really be happening inside of her even though she could feel it on top of seeing her body change. When the baby started moving, she'd found the flutters and kicks irritating. And none of the physical changes were remotely flattering as far as she was concerned. All of that had convinced her she wasn't programed to be a mother, that she would only be worse when the baby came. And so she'd road out that last trimester feeling like she had a ticking time bomb in her belly, wishing she'd had some magical way to speed it up and be done with it.

Now the knowledge that that actually did exist and could be used to take her child from her for some nefarious purpose scared her shitless!

She hadn't expected at all for the panic to transform into something so... instinctually maternal, but then she hadn't seen that coming when Henry ate that turnover either so maybe the surge of love and protectiveness following that confusion and fear shouldn't be so surprising.

Emma had managed to keep it together after the exam and go about her day, trying to act like everything was normal while on the inside she was on an emotional roller coaster. Night patrol was her first real break of alone time after some hysterical laughter before driving to the station to continue the harrowing and frustrating process of cleaning out the evidence room and trying to figure out what evidence went with what forgotten case that went with what never filed arrest, accident, or crime scene reports while the Dwarfs painted and bickered about the best way to install the new ceiling tiles and her father cursed out the ancient computer system and Hook's nonsensical method of filing police reports stuffed into new boxes from the office supply store after the file cabinets that much sex was had against were thrown out and the old evidence boxes disposed of in a dumpster fire out back with the jail cell mattresses, pillows, blankets, cushioned office chairs, and break room carpet.

It was a _fun_ day. Plus the intermittent nausea and frequent bathroom breaks.

Speaking of, Emma looked at her empty soda cup remembering a few times in Portland when she'd had to make due on very rainy nights.

 _Yeah, not gonna happen._

The shortest drive was to her sister's place at 115 West 10th Street, the four story house having reverted back under Fiona's curse to the location it used to have from the one Anna had Dark One powers moved it to in order to reside over the mine tunnel on Mifflin Street. Anna had kept the 710 address on the door, however, mostly because Hook thought it was funny to mess with people.

Emma wasn't certain if the residents of the house Anna had swapped her house with were happy about either relocation, though given they were snooty rich royal types, they were probably glad to be back on the wealthiest street in town instead of the second wealthiest one where the nouveau riche types lived instead of the old moneyed monarchy types -and in the case of the previous owners of the mis-advertised Nantucket style house decided to use their new money to get father away from the old money.

They had the right idea as far as Emma was concerned. She was glad to live on neither street and wasn't fond of having to visit 710/115 West 10th Street to look after the property, not even sure why she'd agreed when her parents or Regina or even Henry could have done it.

After retrieving the mail, rolling her eyes at the issues of _Hustler_ , _Rum Aficionado,_ and _Soldier of Fortune,_ Emma let herself in and went straight for the powder room that had an annoying nautical theme. At least it was contained to the "head" while the rest of the interior still looked like some relator had thrown some furniture and paintings into the place for an open house even through Anna and Hook had lived here for over a year. Other than the bathroom, the only indication of their particular ownership was the proliferation of framed photographs of the two raging narcissists (which were currently all either face down on the end tables or turned around the walls). In every single one of them, including their original wedding photo, Hook was leering like a sexual predator flirting with a woman he had tied up in his basement and Anna was hanging off his arm and gazing adoringly at him like a teenage girl at a Justin Beiber concert. (There were and had ever always been zero photographs of Henry or the pair with any other family members despite a number of the pictures clearly taken at family events with an elbow here or there.) It creeped Emma the fuck out and if she had to endure coming here, she was at least not going to have to look at those egotistical sickoes.

Walking past the overturned photographs, Emma enter the kitchen and snagged a pint of ice cream that she'd put in the freezer for night patrol snacking/craving purposes. As she was digging into some Ben & Jerry's with a plastic spoon from a box she'd also brought so as not to get herpes from any of the silverware, a splash of water doused the side of her face.

Because, of course, even their pet fish was an asshole.

A red fighting fish swam mad circles in the tank by the blender where it more appropriate belonged in a Bass-o-Matic demonstration. Hook had bought Captain Nemo Number 2 and delighted in decorating his too-big-for-one-fish tank with little pirate treasure chests that bubbled and barnacles scrapped off of his ship.

Henry had bought a blue fighting fish to share the space, but Captain Nemo Number 2 had murdered Dorey and eaten everything but the other fish's bones in one horrifically gruesome not-at-all-meet-cute. Apparently, the teen working at the aquarium shop didn't bother to ask if they already had a fighting fish, let alone what sex it was, let alone inform Henry that "Dorey" was male and that male fight fish are violently territorial, so dropping the poor fish unprepared into another one's established domain was essentially sending the thing to a very pain demise.

Hook had laughed, of course, as they'd fought, rooting for Nemo. If Anna would have had any intention to magically intervene, she'd entered the kitchen to late to do so, to a blood filled tank and fish guts as Nemo tore into his barely twitching and soon-after dead trespasser. Of course, her sister had completely repressed Emma's natural revulsion and shrugged with no particular feelings on the matter other than telling Hook he had to clean the tank. Emma was fairly certain that Henry had gone to the potting shed to cry, but she would never ask him about it.

And maybe it wasn't really the red fish's fault... but the thing really _did_ seem evil like the fish in that _South Park_ episode that murdered people and every time she came here she half expected it to fog up the side of the tank with a death threat - hence refusing to relocate it to _her_ home. The feral car and ankle-biting garden gnome were all she could take.

"Here, enjoy your dinner, you little cannibal," she grouched as Nemo chowed down on his shrimp flavored pellets.

Emma watched him as she ate her ice cream, trying to decide if opposite to the usual anthropomorphic magic around here he'd been a person in The Enchanted Forest and if taking him to get x-rayed or blood tested by Whale could tell or not. Gold could probably do some spell, but if Nemo had been a person, he wasn't a very good one, so perhaps an isolated life aquatic being pampered by an idiot pirate was the best option.

The chirping of her new phone forwarding a 9-1-1 call, interrupted her fish gazing and Emma pulled it from her pocket to answer.

"Sheriff Swan."

 _"Aye... this... hic... cr-creepy hic clouds... in the ha-harbor... hic."_

Emma rolled her eyes. She hated Hook's former shipmates more than that fish and that she had to answer emergency calls even if they were likely pranks.

"Creepy clouds. Also known as fog. I'll be right there," Emma snorted and brought her ice cream along as she prepared herself for whatever misery was about to be inflicted upon her by a bunch of drunk ex-pirates who bought the cheap rum Hook brewed and were probably three sheets to the wind before the sun had even set. And might well have been paid off by Hook before he left to ruin her New Years Eve with some dumb prank.

Hook's friends were all assholes and it had quickly become clear that while they'd put on their best reformed person act when Anna was carrying the badge and gun and their former captain's dick like a magical totem, the moment those two were gone and the _real Emma Swan_ was back in charge, they were right back to being complete shitheads who resented her authority and her having failed to lay on her back for the pirate. Basically, they were misogynist pricks who hated any woman who didn't instantly drop her panties after being "charmed", which meant borderline sexually assaulted.

Needless to say, Emma was in a foul mood as she drove to the marina, prepared to have her car smeared with mackerel guts - which had already happened twice in the squad car - or drive into some lobster traps that just "accidentally" got left in that dark spot in the shortcut ally between the warehouses which she had almost done last week.

So it was a surprise to find a group of drunk but panicked rather than pranking pirates-turned-fisherman scrambling away from the docks.

As the moon came out from behind a cloud, Emma realized that indeed the water appeared to be turning black, swallowing up all the reflected light that should be dancing on the waves while ice crystals were forming in the still-visible water inside the marina.

A few other people started gathering, including a panicked-looking Grumpy.

"It's another curse!" Leroy bellowed, infighting further panic.

Emma didn't feel bad about smacking him on the back of the head rather hard.

"Owe! What the hell, sister!?"

"You're no longer obligated by Mt. Olympus to shout like a panicked idiot every time you see weird clouds, so grow a pair, sober up, and stop freaking people the hell out," Emma snapped, unnecessarily mean, probably. "The borders are still sealed and there's no dark magic in town strong enough to cast anything more than a stink bomb, so it's _not_ a curse.

"It's probably either some unusual magical weather phenomena caused by the settling post apocalyptic magic or a security measure triggered by some of those angry mermaids that got trapped here trying to make a portal," Emma told the tipsy crowd. "Go back to your homes or your house boats - or the dumpsters you sleep behind," she directed a few of them, "and stop worrying. I'm sure it's nothing."

"It better be!" Leroy growled at her. "I didn't spend my day paining your office for free to get killed by an icy cloud!"

"If my father told you to paint my office for free and you agreed, that's your problem for being gullible when he's being cheap," Emma told the Dwarf. "Stop being my parents' bitches and complaining about it all the time and form a union or something."

Leaving Grumpy to ponder that advise, Emma got back in her car and drove to the end of Marine Drive, parking near the spot of Henry's destroyed castle and then headed on foot down the wide beach toward the shore where the fog was most concentrated. It was definitely getting colder and as she headed toward the beach the number of snow flurries increased even though the clouds hadn't, while a frost was gathering at the edge of the water. She half expected Dementors to show up. Maybe they were real, for all she knew, since wraiths were a thing.

But no black hooded ghost things flew out of the fog that had taken on a black cast where it hugged the water and frothed over the icy waterline. And Emma didn't get any sort of spidey sense of anything nefarious from the fog or ice. She didn't get a sense of anything, actually, and while she was a novice at detecting and identifying kinds of magic, that did strike her as odd even if it was just strange weather.

The ice continued to creep up the wet sand, covering drift wood at the shore and the amount of black fog suddenly increased, rising upwards from the water and then Emma did sense something amorphous, beyond her ability to describe but vaguely familiar from memories that weren't entirely her own.

Just as she made the connection to the events in the lake behind the hospital, the silhouette of a standing figure and a boat emerged from the mist to stop in the tide pool only a few yards from her.

Apparently, the barrier they had set up didn't apply to immortal realms generally beyond the reach of mortals. Emma supposed that made sense since the gods (mostly goddesses) had been in charge of cleaning up Zeus' mess and ensuring Emma's magic could save the town.

"Charon?" she asked, uncertain as she approached.

The ferryman pulled back _her_ hood, revealing a familiar but unscaled face. Nimue answered. "He retired to Elysium. Well, it was more of a forced extended medical leave after what Zeus did to him. I agreed to fill in for a few centuries while he recovers and Hera works out the whole dismantling of the human-punishment-and-reward parts of the so-called afterlife. Better than a pit in Tartarus that'll be the last to get remodeled. I get The Day of The Dead off. And I get to scare assholes the 364 other days a year and make them think they're going straight to Hell instead of Purgatory. It's not turning people into snails and squishing them or sealing loved ones into eternal prisons of torment, but it's an after living."

Nimue paused to kick something in the still fog-shrouded interior of her boat that let out a muffled exclamation of pain.

"Wake up and get your lazy ass up and out of my boat," she snapped. "I have a mermaid serial killer - a guy who killed mermaids, not a mermaid who killed people.. or other mermaids - to take to Davy Jones for some deck swabbing and keel hauling."

Before Emma could ponder what the heck was going on, the former first Dark One's passenger sat up, bursting through the swirling fog and snapped back at Nimue, "You didn't have to kick me!"

"You didn't have to knock yourself out."

" _You_ knocked me out when you _intentionally_ hit me with your ore!"

"Because I couldn't listen to your inane nervous prattling any longer! Of course this stupid woman is going to be happy to see you. Now get out of my damn boat before I take on any more water thanks to your fat mortal ass!"

"I'll miss you too, Nimue," the man in a three peice suit told the ferrywoman who actually did flash a smile before pulling her hood back up... and shoving him rather roughly onto the shore where he stumbled and Emma instictively rushed foward to catch his fall.

"Hey," Nimue's passanger greeted, as the boat slipped back away from the shore, consumed by the swirling, retreating mist, and amended with a shiver beneath Emma's hands, "Fuck, it's freezing!"

Emma opened and shut her mouth several times in shock before managing to croak out, " _NEAL!?"_

* * *

 **AN (story note)** : I intended to publish more of 'Heathens' before getting to this chapter, but after adding the Season 7 spoiler bits I decided not to hedge my bets with getting that done and just start positing this as I edit it. So, yeah, Neal is back from the dead and that will be generally explained in this story. Also, it will be quite a few chapters before Anna and Hook return, so this will mostly be Swanfire with some Snowing, Rumbelle, platonic SwanQueen and Charming Family drama as Emma continues to figure out how she fits into her time-altered family and they contemplate the lives they don't remember and sorts of people they once were that they frustratingly (to Emma) aren't. All of the characters on OUAT kind of went from either heroes or villains to just oblivious assholes who never spent much time self-reflecting on their past or current behavior. I gave Belle a MacGuffin brain tumor due to her totally nuts 180 change in personality, but everyone else just got shafted by Zelena and Anna's magic altering magic in the past, forced into being at an empathic disadvantage compared to their original versions. The Charmings are the worst offendors in that regard, going from Snow insisting the save Regina's life from that wraith hours after their reunion in Season 2 when everyone was at their height of hating the Evil Queen to insisting she's going to murder Belle and Gold's son in Season 6 even though they all know he's been used in some way by Fiona. I really hate the character Snow White became and I want her to hate that person too, take a hard look at her selfish choices (both altered/amplified and not by Anna) and try to become the inspirational person that Snow White should be... rather than the "regular fuck-up" that Ginny called her and Charming in an interview.

 **AN (chapter note)** : If you're wondering WOLF 98, the home of the original party animal, is Storybrooke's canon radio station. KLYC AM 1260, it is an Oldies station from Yamhill County, south of Portland. Anna's address really was 115 West 10th Street in the newspaper advert that Hook and Henry had but it's obviously 710 when we see the house in Storybrooke, which has to mean Emma switched the location; the most obvious reason I could come up with for that was to make use of the "mining tunnels" were already established as running beneath Mifflin Street since Cora used it to travel from Regina's house to her vault. I thought it would be funny if the house reverted to its original location, perhaps with Fiona's curse, but no one changed the house number back, either because Anna didn't give a shit or Hook wanted to fuck with the mailman for some reason. The "Swan House" is also incorrectly described as a "Nantucket Style" house in the ad, presumably because the writers couldn't be bothered to go to the website for the heritage home and see that it as a Queen Anne Revival style house. 710 pays homage to the Greatful Dead's house in San Francisco that presumably Eddy and Josh Dallas incorrectly identified as the same architecture due to basic similarities, but it is a Victorian house. _Fools!_ Emma's address, in this story like Regina's, pays homage to _Lost_. **42 4th Street** in a play on Hurley's lotto numbers: **4 8 15 16 23 42**. The number 42, incidentally, was also Fox Mulder's apartment and chosen by Chris Carter as an homage to _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ in which the number 42 is the answer to everything. Accurate or not, I'm going to call it a Craftsman style bungalow, as that seems a style far more in keeping with Emma's personality.

 **Quotes** :

"We are officially a land of godless heathens, making today the first day of our societal adulthood. I, for one, am slightly terrified and equally excited, and trying not to break into Hamilton." - Eliot (Hale Appleman) marks Fillory's newfound freedom following Ember's death, _The Magicians_

When Emma was going through Hook' s shit to throw it away, here is what she found: The telescope he used to spy on her. An empty bottle of booze (just ONE?) A box full of all of his murder trinkets – you know, the stuff he lifted off of the corpses of the hundreds of people he killed. The only thing missing was an ACTUAL red flag. - charmedrumbelle on tumblr

 **Question #1** : What's your take on this old lady playing Henry's old lady? Probably they won't have Henry hook up with a _cousin_ they all share through King Xavier's father, but it does look like they are going the _Harold and Maude_ route with the pair a tad bit closer in age than that, but still where it seems like Henry's true love tale is the fairytale version of that teacher who fucked her underage student, got knocked up, went to prison, and then they got married when she got out and insist their is romance is beautifully misunderstood. I've never been a big fan of the age difference between Rumple and Belle or the 300 years alive thing for any of the couples to which that applies. I don't consider Henry's love interest being a cougar as some kind of modern gender equality thing either, just a gender reversal spin on the borderline statutory rape theme these asshats already did with Emma/Neal and Regina/Leopold. It also makes me think that, like at Hogwarts, Storybrooke has no sex ed classes and does have a Victorian sensibility that brainwashes kids into thinking that to find happiness they absolutely must get married the moment they graduate and make babies. Poor Henry. He had such potential. The Enchanted Forest needs a Maury Povich to tell him "You are not the father!" and save him from this travesty. (And, honestly, I have to say that given how A &E fell into a cesspool of shallow vanity with CS, I'm surprised that while they cast a good looking actor for Adult Henry that even giving him an older love interest they paired him with an actress who, let's be honest, on the number scale is inferior to West _and_ they alsogave him a bucktoothed kid who is nowhere even close to as cute as Jared was before he hit puberty... which probably means the girl will grow up to be a knockout unlike Jared as things seem to work that way. Remember when Prince William was a hottie and his little brother was the ginger haired dork no one thought would ever get any ass for more than just his royal blood? But I not a fan of little kids on TV, so I have to endure watching them, I at least like them to be unnaturally cute kids rather than the run-of-the-mill average variety who are going to need braces... or Hermione's teeth-fixing charm.)

 **Question #2** : Less believable replica grafitti done by white people trying to appear ghetto: the OUAT set department who made the "Hyperion Heights" mural or the crew of _The Fresh Prince of Bel Air_ for the opening credits signage? (And will Henry ever sit on his throne or just drive around with a memoryless Rumple and Hook smelling their doughnut farts for 22 episodes? Which would probably be more entertaining than any of the baby mama flashbacks that will probably make the last season of _How I Met Your Mother_ seem genius.)

 **Next up** : Swanfire reunion, plus Dr. Whale's party doesn't go as planned and sadly for Emma's stress level the problem is neither a tipsy Tinkerbell nor zombies.


	17. Resurrected (and It Feels So Good)

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **SDCC Note: This chapter includes a few things mentioned at the con at which** _ **Once Upon A Trash Fire**_ **has no business being, but which isn't really new if you already follow spoilers. I did not watch a video of the panel but did followed a live stream blog that offered nothing remotely of interest as the old cast tried to play up how new versions of their characters have them excited and new cast tried but failed to make me care about their different nationality versions of established characters, like the 99% white Mormon or Trump racist voter would tune in to see Latina Cinderella even if she didn't look old enough to be that freakishly-young-looking-adult-Henry actor's mother which just gives off major Freudian vibes. All I got out of it was that a few things remain constant: A &E don't care about plotholes (Colin pointed out a glaring one in the clip shown, to Adam's annoyance), A&E love to queerbait (another promise of LGBTQ storyline/romance), and YNB is still a baby-obsessed dimwit who needs that CS baby and won't give up on a pregnant Regina. (And yes, I realize the hypocrisy in that remark given my story has all of those things, but this is fanfiction = dumb fan wish fulfillment, not a prime time TV show that should have standards!)**

* * *

 **CHAPTER SEVENTEEN**

 **RESURRECTED (AND IT FEELS SO GOOD)**

"You... how are you...?" Emma squeaked out as the clock tower began to chime in the new year while Neal was giving her that dumb, bemused smile that had infuriated her when they first met... and when they were unexpected reunited.

This time around, though, seeing the building ire in her eyes, that armor of mirth that Neal could employ quite skillfully dwindled to a more serious, subdued expression before he answered, "Had a bit of an adventure with Merlin on the lead up to the latest 'final battle'. He took over for Thanatos, hence Nimue taking Charon's place. Some kind of couples therapy, I think. He reaps the souls, weighs their hearts, and she takes 'em where the scales say they ought to go. Not exactly taking romantic walks on the beach, but it seems to work for a couple of thousand year old sorcerers."

"That's... ah... good for them?" Emma managed. "But how... how are you... not dead?"

Neal shifted his weight in the sand and offered a tentative smile again before explaining, "Right, well, it's a whole complicated mess involving body snatching, heart-sequestering, and a variety of goddesses, but I guess I was more-or-less Hera's last pawn after she kept failing in past attempts to take Zeus down a peg or two. Which, I guess, he knew and had my grandmother try to screw things up when I was a kid, but that didn't work, so, you know, multiple future attempts to screw up Hera's plans for me, the last of which was trying to trap me and Merlin in Tartarus. Obviously didn't work. It helped that between my childhood and present Athena stopped being Zeus' lackey. Turns out she was actually that snake that bit me as a kid, so I wasn't as fated to die as I thought, which helped with the whole getting my life back thing as reparations, I guess."

"So, basically, a loophole," Emma deduced with a flicker of a smile herself.

Neal chuffed softly and dug his hands into his pockets. "Something like that."

Emma let out a light chortle of her own, lips tugging into a full smile as she managed to work through the shock of his not being dead a bit more quickly and less dramatically this time. Apparently, she'd been somewhat desensitized to resurrection. Whether that was a good or bad thing, she didn't feel like pondering at the moment.

She much preferred to appreciate how the starlight glinting off the strands of gray in Neal's hair and taking in the small crinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth that hadn't been there when they were kids but endeared him to her even more, because they'd both grown up from those kids but still carried their love with them. And maybe a bit of that hope too. Both of which made Emma pivot slightly and take a step closer, tilting her head as his warm breath brushed against her lips with little steamy puffs in the chilly night air.

To her relief Neal didn't pull back from the kiss. Instead he smiled against her lips and wrapped his arms around her, returning it deeply and reminding again of the feeling she'd associated with Neal Cassidy so long ago: _home_. Of course, they did have to breath in this world, at which point Emma hugged him tightly.

"I missed you," she half-sobbed then against his shoulder.

"I missed you too," returned Neal, crushing her against him, burying his nose in her hair where it peaked out from her beanie and remembering the last time he did that, the last time he held her, smelled her, tried to memorize her lest they never see each other again. He still didn't know if it had been better or worse not having the warning. "I really thought I'd never see you or Henry again when Zeus poofed you away."

Pulling back after a minute, Emma then slugged him in the arm and sniffed back further tears. "Don't you _ever_ do that to me _or_ Henry again! We can't keep losing you, Neal!"

"I'm not _trying_ to get lost," he exhaled before adding seriously, "I'm sorry. I keep hurting you, Emma, and the last thing I wanted to do was abandon Henry like that-"

Emma held up a hand. "Don't. I don't want anymore sorry's. What _I do want_ is you to not die of hypothermia minutes after coming back from the dead so you can _finally_ talk to our son," she told him, taking his arm and tugging him toward the road.

"How is Henry?" Neal asked, brows furrowing in curiosity and some trepidation. "You said he wasn't really handling the twin thing and how your family was handling it all that great."

"A little better on that front, I think, but still fourteen and teenage horny," sighed Emma.

"Violet?" Neal recalled Henry's girlfriend.

"Not as chaste as you'd expected from a girl from Camelot," Emma replied, then corrected herself, "Actually, strike that. The queen did cheat on her husband and Arthur did still bang his half-sister at some point, so maybe I shouldn't have been expecting a blushing maiden who'd wait until marriage."

Neal stumbled over some driftwood. "You don't mean that-"

"Only because I walked in on them," groaned Emma. "Henry could definitely use his father's advice after whatever medieval crap my father and Hook put in his head about women and relationships. I have to wonder if they're both compensating for being with strong woman who have them by the balls..."

"Speaking of, mine are about to freeze off. Where did you park, Canada?" Neal asked, shivering in the suit he was buried in, clothes not really suited to January in Maine.

"Nimue _could_ have brought you to the marina which has a very adjacent parkinglot."

"She likes theatrics," Neal shrugged. "I guess it could be worse. The gods coulda sent me off in a toga..."

"Or you could've been sent back naked," remarked Emma with a tip of her head and Neal bit back more laughter at her expression.

"Awe hell! Where'd you end up?"

Emma scowled as she answered, "In the middle of Main Street. Luckily only Archie was there. It could have been worse. A few minutes earlier and I'd have been streaking in Anna and Hook's re-wedding procession in front of the entire town."

" _Re_ -wedding?"

"Well, the first one wasn't legit anymore since Anna used my identity and I made sure as shit that got annulled. I really had hoped Anna could be better than that, see it not as a do-over but an out to make a better decision for her future happiness, but instead she decided to throw a wedding without me, a massive royal one with carriages and a church and a bishop."

"Was it Disney movie musical themed again?" Neal asked, grinning and Emma's scowl increased.

"Thankfully _no_. But no matter what she says about wanting to make our parents happy and have one last day being a pretty princess and not an evil sister, I _know_ she got off on having the spotlight _and_ taking yet one more possible happy ending scenario away from me."

Off Neal's lifted brows, she quickly sussed him. "Not that I have ever wanted a royal wedding. Or a Disney musical wedding. Or any wedding at all. Don't get any ideas, Cassidy. I'm not into going from 'nice to meet you' to 'let's get married' like my stupid sister and her skanky husband and the rest of these crazy fairy tale characters. I'm drawing the line at offering to let you stay at my place because Granny's has bed bugs and if you stay at your dad's place you have to put up with a stepmother younger than you and a teething baby."

Shaking her head, Emma sighed, "Give me brooding adult Gideon trying to stab people with a sword over shrieking, drooling, leaky diaper baby Gideon any day. And my brother's not much better. The potty training thing is very much a work in progress. Hence moving out of my parents' house as soon as I could find a place. Your namesake is cute and all, but I draw the line at my brother deciding to have his nap time in my bed... and wetting the bed _with me in it._ "

Neal guffawed.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Emma groused. "Just wait until your dad invites you to stay over and Belle makes you change your brother's diaper and he pees in your face. I will accompany you just to get it on video."

"Definitely remind me not to die on you again!" Neal retorted, a faux shudder turning into a real shiver. " _Jesus_ it gets cold in Maine."

"Lucky for you, the heater in my car is one of the few things _Killian_ didn't break trying to adjust it with his hook," snorted Emma, nodding toward the Bug now appearing over the rise. "Don't worry, I had it bleached and fumigated. If there's any crabs in it, they're the crustacean kind that Smee threw in there because he's an asshole and the pirates all hate me and act like dumb high school kids without their one-handed leader and his wench around... who I am half convinced told them before leaving for their honeymoon to prank me repeatedly until they get back."

"And other than that, you and your sister are on good terms or what?" asked Neal while rubbing his hands together.

Emma shrugged. "We parted on _okay_ terms. I'm still trying to get myself to be okay with some stuff and not blame her. I do remember some things now, like more of an awareness of Anna's existence that I had when I was younger and lost as I grew up. Like when I first ran way."

"Yeah?"

Nodding, Emma explained, "I heard her in my head that night: 'Just keep walking.' It happened again a few years later. I woke up on the corner of the street my foster home was on with no idea how I got there. I thought I'd sleepwalked. But that time I didn't listen. I thought of August's story. And I went back. And that was the last time I can actually remember hearing a voice that didn't seem like it was me. I don't know if she was angry that I didn't listen, that I was that gullible and believed some boy I met on the street, or if it was just that my will or my magic got stronger. She still influenced me sometimes. Impulses that I did listen to, mostly when my self-esteem was at its shittiest, but I never _heard_ her again. Just... followed the impulses."

"Like when you ran away that last time. After the stuff with Lily messing up your foster family and then Ingrid and the car."

"That was probably a mutual decision." Emma pursed her lips before admitting, "I hope we can work things out. It would be nice to have a sibling who isn't in diapers. But I'm not sure if that's in the cards for us."

"She could feel the same," Neal considered as they reached the weedy patch where Henry's castle used to be.

"I don't know. Her capacity to 'feel' is a bit... restricted," Emma shook her head, then explained, "She's not a violent prick like my uncle or a total lunatic like Zelena, so I suppose I did have some influence on her. Living my life she was the kind of woman who'd risk her life to save yours... but who'd do it a hell of a lot quicker if it benefited her. Whether that sticks or not..." She shrugged.

"So she and Hook are well-suited then," Neal mused. "Two assholes aspiring at redemption but more for the bragging rights than that good feeling inside you get when you don't screw someone over."

"Pretty much," snorted Emma. "It might be tolerable if they keep the 'screwing over' to dumb pranks like Hook's idiot friends and their kinky sexual positions. Although it was not fun when they got Tinkerbell to jinx the bouquet so I'd catch it _and get thrown overboard_ before their honeymoon _then_ a seagull crapped on my head while I was soaking wet and covered in seaweed and - _Stop laughing, Cassidy!_ " she snapped and he bit his lip.

"Sorry," Neal giggled. "I was remembering when that seagull stole your hotdog and you fell in that pond and-"

"Nearly got mauled by geese. Yes, I remember that," grouched Emma. "You'd think birds would be kinder to me on account of my name."

"So... you caught the bouquet, huh?" Neal remarked as they finally reached the car. "What kind was it? And was any prancing through fields involved to pick the flowers?" he teased.

"Oh, shut up! That wasn't me!" Emma griped. "That wasn't even my sister. That was just... a travesty!"

Neal laughed at that. "Well, at least I got a big heroic portrait of my dead wish self. That was nice. But I'm not sure I want to know what kind of air-headed knight with a bouffant you must have wished me into-"

"I think you mean my sister 'wished'." She rolled her yes and opened the passenger door, "Just get in the damn car before we both freeze!"

"Don't you have a patrol car?" Neal asked. "Nice uniform, by the way. I forgot to mention it. The brown really brings out your annoyed frowny face!"

Emma shut the door on his grin and walked around to the driver's side, internally both cursing and shouting for joy at the infuriating man who'd once again intruded into her life.

Once in the driver's seat, Emma turned on the engine and set the heater to full blast. As they held their hands in front of the vents she grumbled, "I only started wearing the uniform because my sister took all of my clothes, skanked half of them up, threw out the rest, and it helps remind people that I'm not her."

"Along with the glasses. Did I mention before that I think they're hot?"

"Possibly in Hell," smirked Emma.

"Quasi-Hell," Neal corrected, grin increasing as he declared, "I got you something," and reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a shiny trinket on a chain.

"My keychain!" Emma gasped. "How did you-?"

"Guess it sort of died like the quill died first time around," Neal shrugged, "and ended up in The Underworld. You like it?"

"Yeah," Emma answered, choked up, and took the small trinket from his hand. As she did, she noticed that the branding from the Vault of the Dark One was gone from Neal's palm. As she caught his hand, examining his lifeline, he let out a slight chuckle.

"No longer branded by death and darkness thanks to the original fire pit that Prometheus guy stole from."

"Good."

Smiling, Emma kissed his palm, but when she looked up, Neal's smile had faded and there was sadness in his eyes. "What is it? Don't tell me you were actually going to propose with that and I ruined it in a less creepy and invasive way than my sister ruined a proposal."

"Naw," Neal shook his head. "I didn't have such high expectations, Em. I'm aware that we don't really know each other. We're not the people we were as kids."

"We sort of didn't entirely know each other or ourselves even back then," Emma sighed. "I definitely didn't know _myself_. Savior. Princess. Harboring a parasitic magical evil twin."

"Yeah, you did," Neal insisted. "I mean, maybe not those things, but you knew who you were, Emma."

"Not always," she shook her head. "Like I said, with my sister, it's complicated, trying to figure out the real me. Now... now all I've got is my own decisions and I'm starting to realize how many times over the course of my life that I chickened out of making them and let Anna do that dirty work. But I don't want to make choices just to spite being afraid of making them. It's... confusing."

"Sounds rough," Neal agreed. "But I know who you are beneath all that confusing stuff. It was your kindness, your not-quite-but-almost hopefulness that made me fall for you, Em. You believed you could be more than what everyone told you. And where and when I grew up, there weren't a lot of people like that, who still dreamed of a better life and believed they could be more than some dirt poor peasant... or the town coward."

"And you were one of the few, huh?" Emma prompted, curious. "You wanted to be more than everyone expected, to be brave, even if that meant going to the front lines to be slaughtered by ogres."

"I did once, foolishly." Neal sighed and scratched at his smooth palm. "You're not the only one whose childhood fucked them up. I didn't stay that brave, Emma. I tried to ignore it my whole life, but I'm my parents' son in ways I can't completely avoid. Not to mention my grandparents. I have some of the worst parts of them in me, and maybe the best parts fight and win most of the time. But at some of the moments when it most counted, I let the worst parts win."

Emma slipped her hand into his. "Isn't that true of everyone? There's lots of times when I wasn't brave that I should have been. I gave up Henry because I didn't believe in myself. I let Cleo bleed to death in that ally because I was afraid of going back to prison and I was ashamed that I'd broken the law - again, that I screwed up the chance she gave me and it cost her getting to find her daughter. And then I wasn't able to save you. I didn't believe enough. I was the product of true love. I saved Henry with it. But I was afraid. Afraid it wouldn't work. Afraid it would. Those times I let the worst parts of me, the coward in me, win. Yeah, there was my sister's apathy and self-preservation and her lady boner for Hook at the end there, but it was my fear and shame and not believing in myself and that love can overcome anything that let those emotions make my decisions, including not trying anything to save you."

"I guess we're both pretty screwed up, huh?" Neal quipped.

"But we're not cursed, alcohol-addicted narcissists with medicine cabinets full of STD meds," Emma retorted, "so it could be worse."

"True."

Emma took a breath. "I get that we're kind of strangers getting to know each other again, Neal. And we're probably going to hurt each other sometimes without meaning too, but something I _have_ learned from Anna's destruction of my life is that it's not about the good parts just winning _more often_ than the bad. It's also recognizing which are the good and bad parts, which she kind of fails at every time. And that's easier when someone's got your back.

"We're not perfect. But I know we made each other better, stronger together than we were apart, so maybe we can do that again - without making the mistake of giving into the fear of losing that? I mean... if you think we've still got a shot?" she amended with a flicker of uncertainty for all the reasons that had stood between them before.

"There's nothing I want more," Neal told her. "I love you. I told you, Emma, always have, always will. Are _you_ sure this is what you want? I'm not the handsome hero in anyone's storybook."

Heart pounding, Emma leaned in again while Neal's hands came up to caress her cheeks, his eyes searching hers.

"I don't care about storybooks and anyone's stupid fairy tale expectations," Emma told Neal. "No one gets to decide my life but me. I don't know what my happy ending will be, but this, you, us, is my happy right now. And right now, _all I want is you_." The words just slipped out, not really thinking of their importance until they were, and she saw the flicker of recognition in Neal's eyes.

This time he met her halfway in a kiss that didn't stop with sweet gratitude and nostalgia... or it rather turned more into a horny teenage nostalgia.

It was maybe appropriate in a full-circle kind of way that they started out in this stolen car... and that thought lost its way because Neal was copping a feel, his no-longer-branded hand having found its way under her sweater, cupping her now-aching-for-different-reasons breast.

"No bra, Sheriff?" Neal rasped against Emma's ear while his fingers found the raised bump of her nipple and he made her squeak in the most adorable way.

"Laundry day," Emma lied, really glad she'd discarded that too-tight sports bra before night patrol as she crawled over the center console into her newly revived lover's lap.

"Here, really?" Neal questioned.

"Why not? Wouldn't be the first time. No one's here, the windows," Emma waved a hand, "are steamy so no one can see. Just because my sister is evil doesn't mean I have to be perfectly good all the time. I am seriously _really_ horny! You have no idea how badly I need this! And right now it's New Years," she told him, pulling off her coat and starting work on his tie, "and my resolution is to have lots of sex with you starting now!"

Neal didn't argue further and helped Emma unbutton her shirt, enjoying very much the pale curves of her breasts and straining nipples in the faint light of the dash. He put his hands on her hips, lifting her to wrap his lips around the left one and she let out a breathy moan before unzipping his pants and tugging at her own jeans and underwear-

"Ah... Em?" he pulled away.

"What!?"

"Why is there something cold and sticky seeping into my pants?"

"Oh, shit! My ice cream!"

Neal scooted forward and Emma pulled out her now squished pint of ice cream that was leaking rather badly.

"Mint chip, huh?" Neal chuckled. "I thought you were a rocky road girl. And isn't it hot chocolate weather?"

"It was on sale," Emma told him, tossing it on the floor. "I had a craving. No fat small town sheriff jokes!"

"You do seem to have put on a few pounds, though," Neal laughed when she settled on his lap again.

"The mortal world ads a few pounds. Like a camera. Lose the ice creamed pants, Mister!"

Neal had his pants half off when Emma's phone chimed. "Probably just New Year's Eve party shenanigans," she stated, hands searching for the opening in his boxers. "Told Whale I'd ignore 'em on account of his neighbors having unpaid parking tickets."

"Nice of you."

"That's me. Sheriff Nice," Emma replied, hands finding what she was looking for.

"D-definitely agree with that," Neal croaked out.

Her phone rang again, playing the theme to _The Munsters_.

"Goddamn it!" Emma swore and fumbled through her pockets in the driver's seat while Neal groaned. Finally pulling out her phone she barked, "What the fuck, Whale!? You asked me to leave you alone!"

"It's FRANKENSTEIN off the clock and circumstances have changed! Get over here now, _Sheriff_!" Whale shouted quite loudly over what sounded like breaking glass and screaming people, causing Emma to pull her phone away at the sounds of pandemonium before Whale disconnected.

"I'm guessing you need to take care of that," mused Neal as Emma held her phone in one hand and his dick in the other.

"Apparently," she grouched, fixing her pants and crawled back into the driver's seat, wincing at the now very wet crotch of her underwear that was probably on its way to seeping through her slacks which were going to being fucking cold as that ice cream when she got out of the car.

With a sigh, Emma turned on the wipers and the defogger and headed back toward Main Street, glancing over at Neal who'd fixed his situation, somewhat, with her rain slicker in his lap and was giving her a bemused look.

"What?"

"You might wanna button your shirt."

As he said that they passed under a street light and a guy in a tux obviously on his home from a party walked into a mailbox.

"SHIT!"

* * *

It _was_ cold walking up Whale's deserted driveway. Zipping up her coat because her nipples refused to calm the fuck down, Emma found the garage door creaking open. As she reached the for her weapon the person on the other side turned to be Whale in some kind of old-timey tuxedo plus his weird mad scientist glasses.

" _Finally_!" Whale growled, moving the goggles to his forehead. "I've had to barricade myself in here!"

"Against what?" Emma asked.

"Your drugged and deranged parents! Since I was barricaded in my lab and you took forever to get here, I had plenty of time to do a urinalysis using the 'sample' your father left in my prized bromeliad and it appears to be something similar to LSD. Which I assure you I was not distributing. They were not even invited. They just showed up a few minutes after midnight acting manic and brandishing those archaic weapons of theirs."

"Wonderful," Emma groaned. She really should not have gone off on that train of thought about Storybrooke's drug dealers; around here that might just actually cause a jinx.

Annoyed, she walked back to the car, opening the door to inform Neal, "Apparently someone slipped my parents the magical equivalent of acid and they are ransacking Whale's house on a bad trip. My father peed in his house plants."

"Sounds fun," Neal snorted. "Want backup?"

"Only to drag their asses into the back of this car after I knock them out. My magic training might still be limited, but I should be able to manage that at least," Emma returned and left a very annoyed Whale in his driveway to head in through the front door just as the sound of glass breaking echoed through the night.

The place was, in fact, totally trashed. Emma found her father in the livingroom turning a potted ficus into mulch with his sword after having apparently destroyed all the couch cushions like a neurotic dog. At the sound of her boots crunching broken champagne glasses, he brandished his broadsword and shouted, "Ahhhhh! Another carrot! Die, evil carrot!"

Emma used a burst of magic to throw him into the nearest wall, knocking him out. She felt pretty bad about that. Worse when she had to knock out her many-more-times-concussed mother after finding her in the kitchen crouched on the table in the breakfast nook aiming her bow and arrow like an medieval sniper; the pixie-haired woman screamed Xena style and started shooting arrows like bullets that Emma had to magically push aside, doing even more damage to Whale's plaster since she couldn't remember how to just disintegrate them or turn them into matchsticks.

Neal and the very unhappy mad scientist then helped carry the unconscious and handcuffed pair to her car and squeeze them into the small backseat.

"I expect to be paid for damages!" Whale huffed, "or I will sue."

Rolling her eyes, Emma told him, "How about using your mad science skills to find the competition who mixed up this magical acid and then make _them_ pay for it?"

Whale scowled and conceded, "Fine. But no more walk-in appointments for this family, Sheriff. You all suffer and inflict too many bodily injuries. Do you have any idea what my malpractice is for the crazy things I've had to find a way to explain in real medical terminology?

"Like people coming back from the dead!" he directed toward Neal. "I signed your death certificate, man! You've got legal records and shit in this world, which is going to lead to me having a seriously miserably New Years Day on top of my house!"

"You don't have any insurance," Emma argued. "And according to Mr. K, you didn't give Neal any death certificate. Seems you forgot between lockdown mode after the monkey thing and then you had that breakdown and bleached your hair or you just didn't want to be bothered trying to explain how-"

"All right, fine," Whale shrugged while running a hand through his bleached hair, "I don't have to pay insurance and I may have never filed a death certificate for him. Or those two creeps who came to town trying to kill him. It'll be my ass if MIB's show up, and it's not like this guy here had oodles of money and properties that required legal reallocation. From what I understand, your family loaded a bunch of old junk and a horse into that crazy hoe's repainted U-Haul and brought it here on their cursed pirate ship.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have urine to clean out of my carpets and I think your mother may have taken a dump in my kitchen sink!"

With that he stomped back to his garage.

"The only non-magic-world guy in a town of magic-world people, huh?" Neal recalled.

"Something like that," Emma sighed. "So, up for a change of plans and buying old people diapers for my stoned parents? On the brighter side, Henry's at their place watching my brother and they usually have chocolate Pop Tarts. Which he is forbidden to eat... and probably ate anyway while not doing his book report and sexting his girlfriend. Which is better than trying to have actual sex, but still... and with that evil fish watching!"

" _Evil_ fish?"

"Yes, evil fish. You think my sister and Hook would have a _not_ evil fish for pet? What's more important here, my sister's homicidal fish or our drunk, horny son?"

"Point. But you did bring up the fish."

"It's just creepy. It watches you. I swear it has to be a transfigured serial killer."

"Around here, that wouldn't surprise me," shrugged Neal.

"Anyway," Emma let out a sigh as she headed for the Dark Star, "like I said before, Henry needs a guy with a less fairy tale perspective, I think. And he's being punished, so keep that in mind. He doesn't get out of being grounded just because you're back from the dead, got it? And see if you can get him to do something about his B.O. I don't really know how to deal with that other than telling him to take showers, but I'm worried what he's doing in the shower, and somehow he smells even worse after! But no one else seems to think it's a big deal. It's driving me crazy!"

Neal considered that, then asked, "He's not by chance using Hook's cologne, is he?"

"Hook's cologne?" Emma repeated, confused. "I don't think so. I mean, the pirate always smells like rum and stale leather, but usually not bad enough that I want to puke."

"Yeah, cause _he_ was wearing it," Neal explained, "and you're not related. It's some kind of lust potion he stole in bulk at during his supply runs for Neverland. Got Tinkerbell a bit twitipaited before Tiger Lily came to her rescue."

Emma blinked at him and then growled, "Hold on. You're saying Hook's been wearing a consent-inhibiting scent all this time and now Henry is using it to try and get his girlfriend to put out!?"

"Well, hopefully Hook didn't tell him it was ten shots of tequila in scent form or Henry's in need of more deprogramming than you thought," Neal shrugged. "But that's probably why you had a weird attraction to Hook with or without your sister until he lost his ship and his barrels of the stuff."

"Wait," Emma recalled now, " _that's_ why he's so pissed off at the mermaids that broke into his ship in retribution for not keeping his end of their bargain for smuggling goods in and out of Storybrooke! He never even told my sister that they stole anything, but Smee said he figured that part of the 'honeymoon' was to retrieve his property."

Pursing her lips, she wondered, "Is he trying to make sure my sister stays interested? She obviously doesn't need it to put out since she was even hotter for him after he lost his ship. Or does he just like women wanting him because it makes her jealous? Or just because he likes it? Fuck! What is _wrong_ with them!?"

"Defective genes, curses, and magical STDs, I figured," shrugged Neal.

"Well, I am _definitely_ having a word with Henry about this _and that dirty pirate_ when he gets back." She smirked a little. " _And_ my sister. She'll take him back, of course, but the best parts of the past of couple years, looking back, was whenever she was pissed off at Hook for lying to her. Sure, it lasted even less than my parents' usual twenty-four hour limit for secrets about dying or homicide, but I have to take my retrospective pleasures where I can get them or I'm stuck with nightmares involving shopping for overly girlie blouses, and the defiling of pancakes."

"Yeah," Neal recalled with a shudder, "I had to dip my crystal ball in the River of Forgetting after discovering the whole living together/engagement thing over breakfast smut. I was just glad Henry was at Regina's."

Emma sighed at that. "I keep thinking about when I found out Graham was sleeping with her and sneaking out her window and wishing I could be Henry to spare him finding out that fucked up situation. Now I wish I could go back spare Henry my sister and Hook, and Regina and Robin for that matter with Zelena thrown in the middle raping people and no one teaching him that magical disguises do not make that okay. There's so much messed up about that world that's normal to everyone who grew up there, and I don't want Henry to grow up thinking that way. I don't want him to waste his opportunities and his potential not getting an education like me, having a kid too young like me. Turning eighteen and riding a motorcycle, without even an extra gas can, through a portal to an unknown land because you find some mysterious books that have so far only brought misery and leaving with a 'well, I'll be back whenever, Mom' isn't right.

"And I get," she amended, pulling into the parkinglot, "that I'd want to do that too if I had my sister for a mother and Hook for a stepfather, the deadbeats replacing me with a chance to 'do it right' like my parents did, but at least in their case they thought they'd never see me again. I'd want to never see them again. And I'm worried Henry still has all that anger inside that he buried pretending he was happy and cool with everyone else's 'happy beginnings' that could lead him to doing something else stupid even if he's not an Author anymore and even though taking down Merlin's Apprentice and repairing magic has kept this fucked up alternate timeline from fracturing under the darkness of Zelena's magic into divergent replica realms with even less imaginative true loves, saviors, and destinies than this one.

"And I can't believe I just said that," Emma sighed as she glanced again at her unconscious and drooling parents in the backseat. "Fifteen years ago I'd be pulling into a parkinglot at a twenty-four hour convenience store to shoplift Funyons to eat while talking about the next bad movie to sneak into. Now I'm here to buy adult diapers for my parents who are the same age as me with my baby daddy who just came back from the dead because my life is a bad movie I can't get out of even when I'm not an active part of it.

"Sometimes I miss being seventeen and ignorant of all of this," she concluded, fingers toying with her returned keychain before pushing open the car door.

* * *

"HENRY DANIEL MILLS!" Emma howled as the farm house's front door shut behind her.

Henry jumped along with his couchmate who let out a squeak. Both teenagers looked extremely guilty at getting caught. As well they should be.

"I... um... hey... Mom?"

"What is going on here?" Emma demanded. " _Both_ of you know that you are _forbidden_ from seeing each other outside of school. I didn't think either of you were the types to take that as a challenge to piss your parents off even more."

Violet stepped forward and sputtered out, "I'm sorry, Sheriff Swan. Please don't call my father. I just road my horse over a few minutes ago to bring Henry his book report notes. He texted me because I'd agreed to proof read what he'd done so far but my father still doesn't have Internet access so I had to do it by hand and then we both got grounded. I swear that's all it was," she concluded, thrusting out a handful of printed papers with red markings on them.

"Tonight, _maybe_ ," Emma considered, eyes narrowed. Crossing her arms, she directed at Henry, "but I'm not so inclined to believe either of you when you left out the part about using Hook's creepy rapist cologne. Was _Violet_ aware of that?"

From her grimace, the girl was and she insisted, "I knew about that before. It's not why I... It's really not Henry's fault. He mentioned that his stepfa... er uncle had been pressuring him to borrow it because I wasn't... because we moving slowly."

Letting out a sigh, Henry grumbled, "Hook said his cologne and his home brewed rum was the secret to getting a girl to let down her walls - and her underwear. Not that he had to use it on 'my mother', Hook prefaced," Henry snorted. "Well, besides the rum. He thinks that helped make his advice seem more intelligent than it probably was. But the cologne didn't work. Maybe it went rancid or something. Violet just said it smelled bad."

"Of course she did," Emma grated out, wondering if she should even be surprised by that revelation.

Turning to Violet, Emma told the girl, "I don't know why you'd want to test the validity of a dirty pirate's lust perfume and bathtub rum, but I have other family matters to deal with tonight, Violet. Go get your horse and get home. You have fifteen minutes to get your butt back to your farm and send a picture that you're back safely or I am calling your father. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

Violet grimaced at Henry with a parting, "I'm really sorry for getting you in trouble, Henry!"

As the back door shut, Henry tried to give his mother an innocent look with a, "See, I really was working on my book report."

"And nearly slept with your cousin!" Emma hissed, throwing Henry for a loop.

"Er... what?"

"Apparently there's incest prevention magic in that cologne. It makes it smell awful to anyone related to the person wearing it. Which I imagine was the one useful thing about the stuff in The Enchanted Forest: it reduced the number of _inbred_ rape babies."

"I'm in even bigger trouble," Henry surmised.

"Yes, you are in bigger trouble, Henry!" Emma snapped at him. "What if you _weren't_ related? If Violet needed her inhibitions reduced by magic and alcohol to be ready to have sex, then you should have known better than to agree to that! I don't know what pressure she felt she was under, but none if should have been coming from you even if it was just enabling some feeling of needing to have sex that her peers or whatever were putting in her head."

Henry winced. "I know. But it wasn't exactly... I mean... it sort of was. She likes someone else, but she wasn't sure if she did at the time. And she thought if we... tried... if she wasn't into me like even with magic-"

"Because true love trumps lust potions?" Emma snorted. "Kid, you don't even have facial hair yet. Neither of you know what that kind of true love is. If she likes some squire on the football team, it's probably just a crush."

"Not because of true love," Henry rolled his eyes. "I'm not that dumb, Mom! It's because Violet wanted to know if she has a crush on _Mary_ on the volleyball team. Or used to be on the volleyball team, anyway."

Emma blinked. Well, _that_ story took an unexpected turn. "You and Violet were going to have magically drugged drunk sex so she could prove that she either was or wasn't gay?"

"Erm... well... when you put it like that... I'm still grounded, aren't I?"

"And you can add an extra month for lying."

Henry groaned. "But I'm really sorry! I know it was dumb, but your bisexual werewolf godmother's in Oz so me and Violet didn't exactly have anyone to talk to. I mean, other than maybe Gretel, but I'm not sure if she's gay or not. If I asked her, she'd probably beat the crap outta me. And I couldn't exactly go up to Mary and say, 'Hey, my girlfriend maybe has a crush on you, are by chance, also into her?' Well, I guess I could have, but then _Violet_ would have beaten the crap outta me. And I'm like pretty sure Archie is in the closet, so he wasn't really an option either. And she's really worried her dad will find out and disown her, cause even if he's allowing her to go to school and is more, like, liberal on account of having grown up in this world in more modern than medieval times, his beliefs are still more like the Camelot and Second Curse people without memories than everyone else. And even some of the First Curse people are pretty backwards and go to those meetings Philip and Aurora have."

Emma rubbed the bridge of her nose, well aware of those 'meetings' that began at the Town Hall recruiting other like-minded "traditionalists" before Regina banned them following a violent clash with those who liked a more modern and socially mobile life. And her mother had mentioned some refugee parents who'd reluctantly allowed their children to attend the town's school not sending them back this past fall along with even a few students she'd literally had for decades. It was a troubling situation, but one that she was leaving her parents and Regina to sort out because she wasn't technically anyone's savior anymore and medieval politics gave her a migraine. Like the one she could feel coming on due to a mix of medieval politics, teenage hormone-induced stupidity, and pregnant lady hormone -induced exhaustion.

"I understand you trying to protect Violet's privacy, Henry," Emma allowed, "but you have to be smarter about stuff like that. We'll talk more about your punishment tomorrow. Right now-"

The front door opened again and Henry's jaw dropped. "DAD!?"

"Hey..."

" _You didn't give me a chance to break the news yet_!" Emma complained.

"It's been ten minutes."

"Yeah, well, I stepped in Whelby the Second's shit on the front walk and then it turned out Henry's girlfriend wanted to get wasted and sleep with Henry to find out if she's actually gay and the Kid went on a monologue about this annoying growing Enchanted Forest nationalist/traditionalist movement on the edge of town cramping her lesbian style if got out as an excuse for not telling the truth. I was getting to it."

To Henry, she said, "You're dad's back from the dead. He found some kind of loophole."

"Awesome!"

"He's not going to unground you, though, so don't even try!" Emma reminded as Henry threw his arms around Neal who laughed and returned the embrace.

"I missed you, buddy."

"I missed you too, Dad!"

"Damn, you're almost taller than I am now," Neal laughed.

"So what happened in The Underworld? How'd you make it back? You're staying, right?"

"Yeah, unless I get hit by a bus or something, I'm staying. I'll explain everything in a bit," Neal answered. "But we should probably deal with your grandparents first. They're coming around and I'm pretty sure Prince Charming peed in the back of the car after thinking I was a giant carrot trying to eat him."

"SERIOUSLY!?" Emma howled, disgusted. "I just had a deluxe cleaning to get all of the traces of my skanky sister and her man-whore out of it! And what is with the damn carrot hallucination!?"

"Wait... Gramps _peed_ in the _Bug_ " Henry asked, confused, following his parents toward the door where his mother had set a box of Depends on the sideboard. " _That's_ why you have adult diapers? I thought you just bought the wrong ones for my uncle like Hook that time."

Neal snorted at that. "Hook bought Depends?"

"Yeah, we all had a good laugh over that," Emma recalled. "Well, Anna had a good laugh, anyway."

Henry did a fair impression of the pirate complete with accent, "'Bloody hell, I wondered why that dumpy dwarf took out his phone and told me to smile!'

"And, yes, Sneezy sent me the picture! I've been meaning to make t-shirts," Henry boasted.

"That sounds like a solid 'welcome back' plan as revenge for the jinxed bouquet," Emma nodded.

"So... _why_ did Gramps pee in the car?" asked Henry.

"It seems someone drugged him and Snow," Emma explained, "and they went medieval, literally, on Whale's house and, apparently, are having... um... bodily fluid issues."

After a pause, she asked, "You didn't notice them come back here for their weapons?"

Henry shrugged. "I think they just keep them in the truck now so Neal doesn't find them."

"The 'Neal' thing is going to get weird," sighed Emma. "Or _weirder_."

After a pause, she remarked, "Well, the truck wasn't at the crime scene... which is probably a good thing. Driving while hallucinating everything is a carrot or firing arrows off the back at drunk people would not have ended well."

They reached the Bug and Emma opened the passenger side and flipped the seat forward. Before she could reacted, her mother suddenly bounded out, almost knocking her over, and then literally started hopping around the front yard and shouting, "I am not a meter maid! I am not a meter maid!"

David, with a very obvious stain on his tuxedo pants, leaned over and puked on the lawn... well... mostly on the lawn, and then looking up pleading, "Just keep me away from the carrots! I beg you!"

Henry, grinning from ear-to-ear, had his phone out. "This is so _awesome_."

"And you can follow up this awesomeness by helping your father put an adult diaper on your grandfather," Emma told him. " _Grounded_ "

"What did I do?" Neal inquired.

"You knocked me up," Emma replied.

Neal groaned. "Getting shot and dying doesn't make up for that?"

Emma gave him a look that said definitely not. Neal sighed and lifted the wobbling prince to his feet. "Come on, Charming, we'll find you a nice room far away from any vegetables."

Emma watched Neal and Henry escort her father into the house and then popped the seat back into place, noticing with a wince that the sonogram picture was on the floor. She shoved it into her jacket pocket and resolved that as soon as this incident was over, she would definitely clarify that punishment. Although, really did getting shot and dying completely make up for knocking her up the first time and letting Pinocchio get her arrested and taking her money?

"YOU ARE UNDER ARREST, SCUM!" Snow White suddenly shouted, pointing a finger gun at the carved stone snail by the garden hose.

Sighing, Emma took her mother by the arm. "Someone else will take him in, Officer White. You're late for a briefing."

"Oh... can I finally be a detective? I promise I'll be really good at it!"

"Ah... sure," Emma shrugged and handed over her sheriff badge, making the other woman beam in awe that only hallucinogenic drugs could cause.

"I'm a detective! Thank you! Thank you! You won't regret this, Captain!" Snow exclaimed, pumping the air... before hopping through the front door.

"I think I already am," Emma groaned.

* * *

At one thirty in the morning, Neal found himself driving a rusty Suburban with a faded spay-painted "tramp" stamp on the side all the way back into town to pick up a pizza that Tony's wouldn't deliver after midnight beyond the main part of town.

You'd think that putting diapers on two very stoned fairy tale charters would make one start fasting, but Neal hadn't eaten anything normal in what felt like years, Henry was a growing teenage boy who was grossed out by nothing enough to ruin his appetite, and Emma said she hadn't eaten since breakfast, so adult diapering or not, she was going to pass out if she didn't get food that wasn't the gluten-free crap diet her mother gotten roped into by Cinderella, leaving nothing edible in the house but some chocolate Pop-Tarts left over for Henry that he was currently (as previously mentioned by Emma) forbidden to eat while she herself wouldn't eat her once beloved processed breakfast food because of the disgusting things her sister had done with them, including her favorite cinnamon ones.

Emma seemed to have a lot of breakfast-food PTSD now, though Neal couldn't blame her for the pancake thing, having been witness to a spirited bought of that. He really used to love pancakes too, but now the smell of maple syrup made him want to vomit... and crystal balls didn't even come with smell-o-vision. It really was unfortunate the River of Forgetting couldn't be used to wipe out a single memory...

After waiting at the single traffic light, the early 80s SUV that was apparently not used often sputtering unhappily, Neal followed the directions that Emma had given him toward the cross-street on which sat an Italian restaurant that would disgust anyone in New York City with or without Italian heritage. He was aware from his crystal ball gazing that Anna and Hook frequented the place, one of the reasons he'd severely cut back on checking in on the woman he thought was his true love - he couldn't stomach watching them make goo-good eyes at each other _or_ anyone eating that food. Henry had mentioned in New York that the pizza at Tony's was _awful_ compared to the pizza they'd gotten at that take-out joint near Neal's apartment, but it was the only place that served take-out after midnight unless you wanted to get a microwave burrito from the Dark Star, so it would have to do.

As he slowed to turn the corner at the pawn shop, Neal noticed the light was on. A niggling of nerves suddenly tightened in his belly and he was tempted to drive past, putting it off until tomorrow as he'd intended. Not because he had any real trepidation. To be honest, sharing a body with his father had given Neal perspective that made it hard to continue carrying what had remained of old grudges in the immediate wake of Neverland. And the clarity he'd gained after death had pretty much laid all that to rest. But there was the matter of a stepmother and a half-brother now, and if Emma was struggling with her parents and baby brother, he really didn't want to jump head first into his own experience of finding out how he now fit into a family that had been doing fine (or not at certain points) without him for awhile and who didn't really know him well in the first place... or second place with his father.

He wasn't "Baelfire" anymore. He'd never liked the name, honestly, and it didn't help that his mother's intentions for picking it were partially malicious to spite his father: naming their son something that essentially was tied to death. He could tolerate "Bae" which seemed to be a popular pet-name people were using now, which probably made it less weird, but he'd been _Neal_ for long enough now after years in Neverland trying to forget he had any name at all other than Pan's cruel nicknames that it felt more his own than anything else. He'd chosen it, even if it was generic and the only real making it his own was a minor misspelling of the source material.

It was kind of odd and ironic, Neal thought now as he sent a text to Emma on Henry's phone, that both of them had used books to pick their names - and both had been either too embarrassed or run too far from their pasts to even consider sharing that fact with each other. They weren't those people anymore. They were the people they'd chosen to become, the only control they'd had over their fates. But... were they even _those_ people now? The Underworld, and Tartarus in particular, had given Neal a lot to think about and it seemed the aftermath of Emma's experience with her twin had left her discombobulated herself. And there was the time travel/alternate universe matter now too, the world he died in and remembered had been destroyed, the people here now just slightly different.

That darkness put into the magic that spawned this reality had changed everyone, his father included. Emma had purged it with her magic that came from the world that was meant to be and no longer was, but only time would tell what irreversible damage had been done. So maybe it wasn't a bad thing, Neal considered as he got out of the car, that his time here had been much briefer than Emma's and his father keeping his distance the weeks that he was here. There was little of this town, these people, from the original timeline that he got to know, little to discover was missing now and leave him feeling embittered.

But that didn't mean he wasn't nervous about returning, worried he wouldn't be accepted given he never had been the first time, seen as the son of the Dark One and the stranger who brought an overly curious outsider who turned out to be a traitor. That probably wasn't going to win him any points. He just... had to try at being nicer than his old man, he supposed, but just as patient and persistent. Or blackmail Prince Charming with a My Little Pony cospay video...

On that thought, Neal stopped loitering outside "Mr. Gold's: Pawnbroker & Antiques Dealer", blew on them for extra warmth, and turned the icy knob. It was locked, of course, so he had to knock, which brought his father heard from the back, an annoyed expression on his face as he drew nearer and pulled open the door.

"Whatever you need, Charming-"

He stopped himself, looking past the clothes Neal had on and his jaw fell open in shock. " _Bae?_ "

Neal cleared his throat. "Hey, Pop. So... I managed a work around of sorts with the gods and-"

Rumplestiltskin took another step forward and pulled Neal into a tight hug. "I missed you, son. I never let myself hope-"

"I know," returned Neal before pulling back and letting his father guide him into the shop, shutting the door against the cold. "I didn't either. But here I am."

"Wearing David Nolan's clothes," Rumplestiltskin observed. "I assume that means you've already seen Emma. Don't tell me the gods pulled the same stunt with you they did for her. Quite the surprising return as I was cleaning the windows in lieu of lack of invite to her sister's wedding."

"You saw Emma naked!?" Neal sputtered.

"Only from behind," Rumplestiltskin waved him off. "Far less of interest than Henry's other mother in that department."

"Okay. _Gross_ , Papa," Neal winced and looked around. "Please tell me you disinfected wherever you got it on with his other mother's magical duplicate in your weird hate sex affair."

"Don't worry, I sold that credenza to the pirate and his lady love in which to store their wedding china."

"That's both disgusting and hilarious," snorted Neal, then asking, "So what are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn't you be home with Belle and... ah... my literal baby brother?"

"I should," Rumplestiltskin answered, "but I forgot some lease agreements I needed to look over and since Belle convinced me to close the shop tomorrow I thought I'd pop back in and get them finalized tonight - along with an hour or two of peace and quiet. Gideon is teething and I've been stuck with the boy here all week since a wailing baby isn't 'allowed' at the Library. And Belle invited Granny to stay the night, which would be aggravating enough if it wasn't her 'wolf time' which for a werewolf that age just means copious amounts of facial and body hair."

Neal smiled in bemusement. "Sounds like you're turning into a real family man, Papa."

Rumplestiltskin let out a sigh. "I'm doing my best, trying to do better than I did for you, Baelfire."

"You did just fine for me, Papa," Neal insisted. "We didn't have a lot, but I knew you loved me."

"Up until I became the Dark One," Rumplestiltskin shook his head. "You deserved better than that, Bae. So does Gideon."

"Maybe that's true," Neal allowed. "But someone has to contain the Dark One, to keep it from turning back into Chaos and destroying everything. People here, they might not get that. Anna and Hook, they might have bought into that lie Nimue sold them that it could be destroyed with a weapon made from the cup that brought it into the mortal worlds, but we both know that severing it from that anchor-"

"Would have brought about the very thing those two sluts were trying to avoid... moments after the pirate was attempting to achieve it," Rumplestiltskin scoffed. "But then Hook always does think too highly of himself, that he could never be tricked, particularly by a woman... even immediately after discovering that his own woman had done just that _and_ being used by your mother who never loved him as he did her. All the syphilis that's eaten his brain, no doubt. No other explanation for how a Dark One could not remember he is the Dark One," he concluded with a roll of his eyes.

"You did what you had to do," Neal shrugged. "I'd have preferred if you'd actually explained yourself to everyone, like you also didn't do when trying to contain the Dark One in that hat, though."

"Belle says I need to learn to be more... collaborative," Rumplestiltskin sighed. "I am trying. Your lover's family is not putting in much effort, however, so it is what it is. I am just working to ensure my second born has the life he should, never experiences the terror and darkness that my mother put him through. I just wish I could do the same for you, Bae. Erase your mother leaving you, what I became, what my father did to you, losing your love and then your life for me..."

Rumplestiltskin concluded, "You said that I showed you what sacrifice means, but it's the other way around, Bae. It always has been."

Neal held back a sob. "But if I had never used that stupid knife to control you, it wouldn't have been so hard for you to fight it and-"

"And at some point someone was going to get the dagger and use it to control me, Bae," Rumplestiltskin reminded. "No Dark One has avoided that, and it doubtless would have been to do far worse things than kill a mass murderer who wanted to frame an innocent teenage boy for conspiring to commit the very crime he contrived with no remorse. At least there was some justice to it. And I was able to give you back some innocence... even if I could not spare you the ultimate repercussions."

"I'm here now," Neal pointed out. "And if you spared me all of that, I never would have met Emma. Henry wouldn't exist. There's always bad with the good. We both just got more bad than good. But maybe that'll be different now."

"Perhaps."

A jangling sound drew them to the door and Belle entered, looking annoyed, "Rumplestiltskin, you sneaky, underhanded-"

She startled and gasped, " _Neal_?"

"Ah... yeah, hey, Belle," he greeted with small smile, not sure if he should hug her or not until she initiated the embrace and started to cry.

"I'm so sorry!" she sobbed. "I trusted a talking candle stick and you died! And you then you died again so your father would get a second chance and I was awful to him when he was suffering and I slept in Hook's bed and got crabs and not the kind he keeps in that bucket to feed the sea lions!" she lamented as she pulled away sniffling.

Neal offered a rueful smile. "Well, at least you got one of his curable diseases. Emma said her sister got herpes. And I understand you had a brain tumor, so you weren't yourself."

Belle nodded and sighed. "Turns out it's heredity. Some mix of genetics and the ancient fairy mine run-off in Avonlea. My mother had it too. She went... well... crazy and... and killed herself. My father had my memories altered to think she got eaten by ogres and that's why he didn't want me going on a quest to get them back. We're still sort on the outs about that."

"No shortage of family drama around here," Rumplestiltskin stated.

"But good to have some _good_ drama for a change!" Belle added. "How are you here? Did the gods let you return?"

"More like goddesses," Neal corrected. "Anyway, it's all good. And you guys are good. And Gideon is...?"

"At home with Granny. It seemed wrong that she should spend New Year's Eve all alone at the Inn with Ruby gone," Belle replied.

"It's also wrong that she should be all alone with a teething baby at this hour of the morning," Rumplestiltskin argued.

"Yes, well, it's silly for you to poof yourself over here to escape socializing with someone other than your wife and son _and_ think I wouldn't find out and drag you home to listen to Granny's howling rendition of 'Auld Lang Syne'," Belle shot back and took her husband by the arm, dragging him toward the door. "Now, come on. I'm taking you home.

"Neal, you're welcome to stay with us, of course."

"Ah... as much as I'm usually down for werewolf karaoke," Neal replied, not really appreciating the thought of any old woman and a baby any more than Emma's parents, "I have to pick up a pizza for Emma."

"Oh, of course," Belle nodded as Rumplestiltskin locked the door behind them. "Then, shoo. Family reunion over. Go back to Emma and have sex."

"BELLE!" Rumplestiltskin gasped.

"What? He's been gone for two months and they only had a brief reunion in The Underworld. Henry is babysitting his uncle. I'm sure they are both very horny."

"I do not want to contemplate my son's sex life!" Rumplestiltskin groused. "I have agreed to tolerate Emma because she is not her skank of a sister, but that doesn't mean I-"

"Rumple is very happy for you both," Belle cut him off, giving her husband a glare and then reached into her purse and pulled out a condom. "I'm sure I have more in here..."

"Good lord," Rumplestiltskin groaned.

"Um... I think Henry stole a bunch from the clinic so we're probably good," Neal replied, not sure what to say.

"Oh, right, I heard he was grounded for getting caught nearly in flagrante delicto with Violet," Belle nodded. "I offered to teach a free sex ed class at the Library, you know, that would go over all of the basics and encourage teenagers to be safe by considering alternatives to intercourse like oral and a-"

"BELLE!"

"Oh, stop it, Rumple!" Belle huffed. "You're sounding just as bad as those backwards chastity belt types who threw bricks through my windows with very nasty misspelled notes and anatomically incorrect depictions of the female reproductive system. I'm sure more than one of those Neanderthals have had anal sex simply because they're too ignorant to find their own wives' vaginas!"

"Yes, well, while I don't doubt that," Rumplestiltskin sighed "we really should go before Granny's angina turns into a heart attack from our other son's screaming, not helped by the very big teeth his babysitter has... the one or two of them that aren't dentures, anyway."

"Oh, all right," Belle agreed. "Have a good night, Neal. You'll have to stop by and see Gideon when he's more agreeable."

She gave Neal a kiss on the cheek before tugging his father toward his car before asking, "Do you think Hook's moonshine would work better on his gums on than your Scotch?"

"You used my thirty year old Scotch for a tooth ache?"

"It's not even an ounce, Rumple! And it tastes better than the cheap stuff from the Dark Star. Gideon spit that washcloth out and looked at me like I was trying to poison him!"

"Well, at least the boy has taste I suppose..."

Those were the man's final words as Rumplestiltskin got in the car before Belle pulled away from the curb. Neal shook his head. He hadn't thought his night could get weirder than Prince Charming in a diaper...

Glancing at the clock tower, Neal got back in the Suburban and drove the next block down to the pizza joint where his sort-of sister-in-law and a very creepy first date with his stepfather. Yeah, his family wasn't weird at all.

Only the take-out window was open and the picnic tables covered in red and white plastic checkered table clothes all empty while a lanky kid with the name-tag 'Jack' typed on his phone.

"I'm picking up a pizza for Emma Swan," Neal announced. "Extra large with pepperoni and black olives."

"You want the warming charm?" sighed Jack.

"Sure," Neal shrugged.

The kid blandly reported, "That'll be seventeen fifty."

Neal handed over the cash Emma had given him and the teenager handed over a box with a sticker on it reading: **warming charm keeps pizza oven hot for 1 hour.**

"The wonders of magic, huh?" Neal mused.

"Meh, waste of magic. The pizza sucks at any temperature," said the kid, concluding with a bored tone, "Come again soon."

Neal left the kid to return to his phone, back to probably imagining a life that didn't involve slinging substandard pizzas at two in the morning on New Year's. He'd been there, though the phone was a cheap analogue burner and the surroundings were the far less clean and peaceful streets of New York City.

This might be a strange town where the pizza boxes came with warming charms instead of breadsticks, Neal mused, but people still had the same ordinary problems of jobs they didn't like, youthful aspirations that might be unattainable... and cars that needed more work done than they could probably afford after buying a farm...

Neal had a chance now, at least, to help his son avoid many of the problems and obstacles that he and Emma had faced - even if he couldn't do anything about the state of Storybrooke's pizza.

* * *

Things were... _complicated_.

After an hour of enduring Snow White trying to arrest furniture while hopping around like a bunny, keeping Prince Charming from trying to fly off the top of the staircase after his wife stole the handcuff key from Emma's pocket and let him "go free on bail", and getting her brother back to sleep after he slipped past Henry to demand juice, there had finally been enough of a lull for Emma to make a cup of hot chocolate and settle into a chair in the breakfast nook window to watch her mother sleep in what was some sort of rabbit den/cubical that she'd constructed under the kitchen table with pillows and office supplies.

It was actually kind of adorable how her nose twitched even in sleep and the way she was clutching Emma's badge.

Perhaps the wrong one of her parents had joined the department and it was Snow who really had the heart of a good law enforcement officer even if David had the daring and ego to put himself in harm's way without reservation. Her mother did seem to enjoy being principal, teaching an archery class, and lending out her birdhouse-making hobby to Ella's daycare to teach the little kids about nature, but maybe those were interests she chose because they were safer than chasing down bad guys after years of being one of the "bad guys" on the run.

Or maybe it was just some shift in personality between universes...

Emma let out a sigh, always feeling conflicted about her parents and her current relationship with them, her mother in particular. Her father was just as guilty of the things they'd let slide and encouraged with her sister, but Emma had figured out well before then that her mother was the dominant personality in their marriage, the nature or nurture of her royal upbringing giving her demonstrative quality that Emma's father lacked, at least without making an effort to put his foot down about something. People just deferred to her mother, her father included, probably not even aware he was doing it, giving up his side of the argument without a fight... but there _were_ times when Emma knew he disagreed, when he was leery of her "walls down" personality and behavior and _he should have fought_. In the end, he'd stayed silent much the way Regina's father had up against her mother.

Fairytale "true love" relationships never seemed as equal as they should to Emma. Which was maybe true of _all_ relationships, but if something was labeled "true love" or "soulmates" it just seemed reasonable that the parties involved wouldn't have such an imbalance of power in any aspect of their relationship.

Just another frustration with her parents that Emma couldn't entirely blame on time travel, though her father did seem less outspoken here, more prone toward lying and doing what he wanted in secret over challenging his wife's opinion. But then everyone was more prone toward lying than she remembered before unintentionally handing her badge to her sister.

Her parents here (or before) weren't bad people, they were just... predisposed to acting badly under the false impression that they being heroic. It wasn't a new thing, just really _really_ amplified after Anna altered the past, and so once something Emma could easily tolerate had become something she found frustrating and at times painful and insulting.

Right now, the most aggravating part of it was that tainted magic wasn't effecting them anymore. Everyone was free of that magical subconscious influence - and it hard to consider that maybe it was too late to turn back that clock to before Zelena cast that spell. Maybe her parents now could never be the parents she remembered who would have wanted and fought for their daughter to have better, to not settle, who wouldn't have slapped a "true love" label on the first "come fuck me" look across a crowded room.

As Emma finished her cocoa, her phone vibrated with a text. Henry's number, but Neal who was borrowing their son's phone. She'd made him check in regularly. Yes, she was paranoid of losing him, but would anyone really blame her?

 **On my way back. Parents still asleep?**

Emma typed back:

 **Not STILL but asleep. Reunion good or bad?**

Neal responded.

 **Weird. Belle gave me a condom and talked about anal sex**

Emma snorted. Belle could be weird even without a brain tumor. Her phone buzzed.

 **Rude not to use it? Doesn't have to be for anal ;-)**

Emma smirked and typed back.

 **Depends if you got the warming charm**

Neal's response was a heart emoji followed by a cactus and a... tempura shrimp? She had no idea what that meant. She sent back a pumpkin and a bicycle after which the sound of heaving drew her attention quickly to the office fort.

Emma managed to grab the kitchen's trash bin from the sink and scramble under the table before the couch cushions got ruined and then handed her mother some paper towels.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh I don't feel good," Snow groaned after puking and then observed, "Am I... under the kitchen table? Did I... build a fort with Neal?"

"Um... sort of," Emma replied. Just not the Neal she was thinking of. "Someone slipped you and Dad some drugs at your party and you've both been really out of it. Do you remember anything suspicious?"

"No. I... I remember it was midnight and walking to the truck and then..." She shook her head and gagged again.

"Well, it looks like you guys got your weapons from the truck and then jumped over some fences to get to Whale's backyard and scared a lot of people. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but Whale's house is pretty ransacked."

Snow moaned in surprised disgust. "I'm going to have to find a new gynecologist, aren't I?"

"Probably should have done that after you slept with him. And don't say 'cursed'. It's still weird."

As her mother started heaving again, Emma grabbed her and pulled her out. "Bathroom."

They managed, though Snow as quite dizzy, to make it just in time. The fairytale princess wiped her mouth on some toilet paper and wondered, "Why is it orange?"

"You ate all of my Cheetos," Emma explained while trying not to start sympathetic puking.

"I don't even like Cheetos!"

"You thought you were a bunny and they were mini carrots and you were on a stake out because you were also a cop for some reason with Henry who was a fox and possibly your CI. I wasn't entirely clear on the specifics of your hallucination. But you made detective," Emma pointed to the badge pinned to her pajama top, "so congratulations!"

Snow examined her daughter's badge and in doing so pulled up her top and discovered the crinkley plastic undergarment sticking out of the waistband of her pajama bottoms. "Am I wearing a diaper!?"

"You guys had some... bodily fluid issues. And problems identifying real toilets, apparently. Another reason you might want to avoid Whale who is probably going to have to replace his sink," Emma told her.

" _Great_ ," Snow groaned before puking again. "Ohhhh this is worse than the time I got drunk at that bar by the docks!"

"Here," Emma handed her a cup of mouthwash.

Snow swished and spit, flushed the toilet... and then started bawling. "I'm so sorry!"

Emma winced. "Hey, it's fine. I mean, the puking is gross and, ah, the diaper was kind of traumatic, but it's not your fault and we're family, so-"

"No no," Snow cried, looking manic, and took Emma's hands as she insisted, "You're my baby girl and I haven't protected you. E-even when I have, it's been by accident while doing selfish things, like that stupid spell before you born. And... I put your brother in danger before he was born which put you in danger and messed up the universe! You lost your world because of me! But you're still my daughter. And _how did I not know_?"

"I don't know," sighed Emma. "You just didn't know me well. Maybe I didn't let you. Maybe it was time magic stuff. But I know I didn't accept the things that are important to you back in that other world while Anna did in this one. So I get that it was... easier to love her even when she did bad things."

"Oh, sweetheart, I loved you from the moment I knew you were my daughter," Snow insisted. "I just... maybe I haven't understood you... or tried to understand you as I should have."

Emma let out another sigh and considered, "I do kind of get it, you know. Falling in love in that outside world, without magic and fairy tales, separated from everyone whose lives were on hold, my story played by a different set of rules where there wasn't some deus ex machina that jumps in at the last second and finds a way for true love to be together just when it seems all hope is lost. I lost love and hope a lot. I believed I was alone. I couldn't feel the spell you and Dad gave me if I didn't believe in magic. It made me... different. It made you look at me and my life differently."

Snow continued to cry as she lamented, "And I made the choice to send you here, to this world without that unwavering hope where you were unloved for so much of your life thinking a song would protect you, that you would never doubt we loved you and would find one another. And when you were... I wasn't there to protect your heart from finding true love in world with different rules, rules that are cruel to those who come from our world, whose hearts are meant to beat in tandem with another."

Wiping at her tears, she apologized, "I know that I hurt you, Emma, by my actions with your sister. I just... I wanted to heal that pain with a love that was born in our world and that I hoped would come with the same sort of magical warranty as mine and your father's so you would never know that pain again.

"Which I know is wrong," she sighed. "I devalued your feelings. I didn't try to help you grieve and heal your broken heart. Instead I pushed you into the arms of another and blindly accepted when you willingly took those first steps like you'd never experienced love before in order to ease _my own_ guilt. I made myself believe that Killian was your destiny, your soulmate, because then all of that pain, all that you had suffered... it was just the contrivances of a curse and true love finding its way in the end - rather than the evidence of how I failed you.

"And now," she wept, "I don't know where to begin fixing things between us," she cried. "I pushed you so hard to replace your lost love with your new one only to find out that new love wasn't yours and the one you lost was lost to you forever because of those good intentions. And now you hate me for that, and I can't blame you, Emma. I put this... what Regina calls my ' _compulsive need_ to justify all of my bad decisions' ahead of your actual well-being and convinced myself that's what I was protecting when I was doing the exact opposite. And I probably wasn't really helping your sister either, which means I failed both of you. And I'm so sorry."

"I'm sorry too," Emma answered sadly. "I'm sorry that I can't... magically move on from that. I know... I know there are a bunch of reasons for everyone ignoring all the red flags that I wasn't actually me. It's just... I lost so much time, moments I can't get back, especially with Henry. And you and Dad shared things with Anna that I'll never get now because you thought she was me, so it's... it's just not the same no matter how much we might want it to be, whether it's a first birthday party or the battles you guys fought together. Plus having your unwavering love and support no matter what she did from the start. I didn't have that."

"Not because of her being any different, sweetheart," Snow insisted. "But because we realized that we hadn't done that from that start, that it Neverland it hurt you. We didn't... we didn't help you then in the way that you needed, and then we were separated and so it's our fault that you didn't believe in true love for yourself enough, that you were too afraid to try, when we were all reunited. _We_ failed you. And maybe... maybe that's because we didn't believe in it enough either, not a love that grew in a world that doesn't grow magical trees when couples who are destined, who are kindred spirits, soulmates meet. We didn't believe that love in this world could have that power. So you didn't believe either. And now... _oh Emma_ , I wish I could change things for you! I've doomed you to a life being incomplete, just like I did to Regina!"

As her mother broke into sobs again, Henry knocked on the door, much to Emma's relief.

"Uh... mom? Grandpa's diaper leaked. And I don't think it's pee this time."

At that declaration, Snow stopped weeping and her eyes got wide. There was gurgling sound and she scrambled up off the floor and exclaimed while tugging at the string on her pajama bottoms, "You need to leave now! Save yourselves!"

* * *

David woke with quite possibly the worst headache he'd ever had, and that included after being knocked out by the Count of Monte Cristo. And he was pretty sure he had to be hallucinating from a concussion when his grandson's dead father who was wearing his clothes handed him a glass of water and an aspirin. Or...

"Am I dead?"

"Naw, you just probably feel like it," said Neal. "You were drugged at the party you guys went to. Also, Henry hit you over the head with your son's animal sounds wheel thing to keep you from trying to fly off the staircase landing."

"So now the duck goes 'moo' and the cow goes 'quack' and the sheep just makes a very sad static-y sound," interjected Emma, walking over and unlocking the handcuff that fastened his left wrist to the staircase railing.

David rubbed the back of his head, detecting a lump, while giving Neal a confused look as he tried to remember what had happened. It was all pretty fuzzy. "Did the drugging include a glamour? All I remember is... carrots?"

"Just some weird hallucinations that led to some weirder 'make-believe' with a side of bladder and bowl control problems," Emma answered. "Neal's actually Neal. You can get the details on that later. First, your probably want to, ah... change your... um... diaper."

David started at that, then as he shifted on the floor realized in abject humiliation that was a very good idea. "Please tell me Henry didn't make a video."

"I TOTALLY MADE A VIDEO, PRINCE SUNSHINE THUNDER CHARMING!" Henry called in a laughing tone from the direction of the kitchen.

"Oh _god_ ," David groaned, then it occurred to him that if he was wearing a diaper... "Oh... please don't tell me that you..."

"Diapering Mom was all the parental trauma I could take," Emma answered. "Lucky for you, Neal worked as an orderly at a sketchy retirement home in Phoenix for a few months and Henry's still being punished. Adult diapers and My Little Pony was probably not the male family bonding any of you want to remember, but as much as I love you, there was no way in hell I was going to do it."

"That's one small relief, I guess," the prince considered while definitely not looking Neal.

Snow shuffled in then, pale and unsteady with Henry at her side, complaining, "I haven't puked this much since I was pregnant! At least the... um... other part seems to have resolved itself. I'm definitely going to have to put toilet paper, matches and air freshener on the -"

"Oh, no! Move out of the way!" David jumped up and stumbled down the hall, throwing himself into the bathroom.

"-shopping list," Snow concluded her sentence as the door slammed shut, the amended, "and more aspirin and Pepto Bismol."

Emma reassured, "Regina said you guys probably just need to spend a day or two in bed and once the last of it's out of your systems you'll be fine. I'll take her some... urine samples and hopefully she can figure out exactly what you got dosed with. Henry can stay and watch Neal-"

Her brother then started shrieking upstairs and Snow winced and covered her ears.

"-or we'll take him over to Granny."

"Please. I don't think my head can take an 'I want Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes' tantrum right now. We'll make it up to you for ruining your New Year's Eve," Snow promised, adding with a glance at Neal, "I'm sure cleaning up your parents' bodily fluids was not the best reunion."

"It wasn't optimal," Emma agreed, starting up the stairs, "though considering our track-record of urine-soaked allies, a cage with a bottomless pit, and a health code violation of a hotdog stand in The Underworld... it could have been a lot worse."

"I'll help you upstairs, Grandma," Henry offered, "while Dad gets you some chamomile tea and toast."

"An adult diaper. My grandson has to help me up the stairs. Tea and toast breakfast. I feel like I'm eighty!" Snow complained.

"But you still look forty."

"I'm thirty-three!" Snow huffed.

"Oh... well... how should I know? You never want to celebrate your birthday and everyone looks old to me!" countered Henry.

Snow harumphed, creeping up the stairs and Neal left for the kitchen, which was decorated much like the kitchen in their old Loft but had stainless steel appliances and windows that looked out on porch and a fenced-in yard with a child's swing set and sandbox.

Emma returned as he was pouring hot water into a mug with a tea bag.

"How's the ankle biter?" Neal asked.

"Watching cartoons while Henry puts his things together. I don't babysit much at my place, mostly because my parents think it's a deathtrap, so I don't really have anything on hand."

"Wait... your place is a _deathtrap_ and you invited me to stay there? And what happened to Granny?"

"You said Granny was staying at your dad's place and mine is not _that_ bad. It just has some... magical quirks."

"Quirks?"

"Just avoid the garage, don't use the shower in the guest bathroom, and stay away from the bed in the back bedroom. Oh, and borrow some of my father's rubber fishing boots and maybe take a shovel," Emma advised. "The security garden gnome likes to bite."

"Hard," added David, shuffling in. "I still have a scar. And I had to get a tetanus shot."

"You're lucky you didn't shoot your foot off," Emma scoffed. "I did tell you to bring your sword. And you said, 'How dangerous can a lawn ornament be, sweetheart? I'll just kick it. No problem.'"

David scowled and took the cup of tea and plate of toast off the counter. "I'll take this up to your mother, smart-ass."

"Do you need any h-"

"No!"

Her father shuffled slowly out of the kitchen and Neal lifted an inquiring brow to which Emma stated, "I did tell you things are complicated."

"I'm sorry," Neal winced on her behalf. "I just wanted you to find your family, Emma."

"And I did. Not your fault my sister screwed them up," she sighed. "Or that she and her deputy dildo ran the department like a couple of criminals and started that while my dad still worked there and ex King George is trying to use that to get a special election to have him thrown out as alderman and replaced by one of his minions. He's probably responsible for this, so my father's bound to be grouchy even if he wasn't annoyed that I'm refusing to take sides, which he sees as wanting him to get fired and not being a very supportive daughter considering he came back to the department to help sort out all of the fraud and thuggery _that started when he was co-sheriff_. So, you know, _complicated._ "

Emma rubbed her temples. "And now my mother has that breakdown last night but doesn't remember it, apparently, which just makes it all even more confusing. It seems like every time this family has any kind of actual... growth, some magical amnesia gets in the way."

"It does seem that way," Neal chuffed. "Maybe we should all start wearing tinfoil hats."

Emma snorted, any further response to that cut off by Henry's arrival with her little brother who was wearing his Batman Halloween costume without the cowl.

"It's the only thing I could get him to put on without screaming and trying to bite me," sighed Henry as the little boy toddled toward table.

"Emmy-Tarts! Emmy-Tarts!"

"Emmy-Tarts?" Neal asked with amusement.

Emma rolled her eyes and explained, "He kind of hated me at first because my sister was a jerk, but then with my parents on this healthy food kick, all I had to do was give him Pop-Tarts and I'm like his best friend now. He calls them 'Emmy-Tarts'."

"That's adorable," chuckled Neal.

"EMMY-TARTS!"

"Only if he gets them," winced Henry.

Standing up, Emma told her brother, "My friend Baelfire here," she didn't know what else to call Neal that was accurate and wouldn't confuse the toddler, "and Henry are going to take you to my house to get some after you help give the animals breakfast. Can you do that?"

The toddler nodded and exclaimed in equal excitement, "PONY! PONY!"

Emma told Neal, "If Geronimo likes you, the kid will like you. Feeding him is the only way to get the prince here to brush his teeth in the morning."

To Henry said, "You can feed the chickens."

"But the rooster _hates_ me!" Henry complained. "Why can't Prince Henry feed the pony?"

"The rooster hates all men," supplied Emma. "But the women are all busy today and Prince Henry is still being punished. Wear gloves, goggles, and a hockey mask. And make sure that book report gets done, Your Highness. I'm proof reading when I get home."

Emma did an un-Emma thing then, making a swift move to give Neal a half hug with a, "Don't disappear again!" and hurried off into the mud room. The back door opened and shut a few moments later, leaving Neal and Henry with a small, jumpy Batman.

"PO-NY! PO-NY!"

"Can't be worse than playing 'brony'," Neal shrugged.

"Are you kidding? That was nothing. _This_ is going to be a nightmare," groaned Henry.

"Come on, he can't be that bad," Neal pressed. "I mean, he was pretty quiet all night. He can't be too bad during the day."

"He was only so quiet because I got Astrid to come over and use her fairy magic lullaby thing to put him to sleep before Violet came over. And still he got up for juice. Of course, she's not the sharpest fairy..."

"You've been fairy-dusting your uncle?" Neal exclaimed, crossing his arms.

"What? Belle did it when she had to watch him... although that was when she still had an undiagnosed brain tumor," Henry conceded, then winced at his father's expression. "You're telling Mom and I'm extra grounded, aren't I?"

"Yep."

"POOPY!" the toddler suddenly called out, followed by a loud, wet fart.

"Yeah," sighed Henry, "sounds about right."

* * *

 **AN** : I can't be the only one who thinks Charming would be a secret Brony, right? I found a Brony Name Generator via Google and "David Charming" resulted in "Sunshine Thunder". I'm not sure how much Rumbelle will be in this story, but I love Dirty!Belle and wanted her to make an appearance. " Sorry if this chapter was heavy on the dialogue with not enough action. I seem to lean toward the extremes at times rather than finding a good balance; it annoys me too!

 **Next up** : Emma investigates, Henry does school work, Neal learns a few things, and _Prince_ Neal tests everyone's patience.


	18. Unhappy New Year

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: I'm glad you liked the** _ **Zootopia**_ **reference. I had fun writing Snow channeling Judy Hopps. I'm pretending** _ **Zootopia**_ **came out early in the timeline Anna created just as** _ **Hamilton**_ **stupidly premiered 18 months early in Season 6 canon because the writers don't check their chronology... which is how Archie was able to reference the musical in a previous chapter.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER EIGHTEEN**

 **UNHAPPY NEW YEAR**

Of all the scenarios that Neal had imaged as he'd prepared to return to the land of the living, spending New Years Day babysitting Emma's brother hadn't even made the top twenty. But here he was in with a wailing toddler strapped into the back of a toy-crammed old SUV in desperate need of a mechanic taking directions from his teenage son who'd stuffed in a couple of earbuds to drown out his uncle's complaints that revolved around wanting to be with pretty much anyone but Henry and a strange guy he'd just met who had yet to satisfy their end of the Pop-Tart deal.

At least he'd gotten to see Geronimo again, and that was a nice surprise that lasted until Henry tripped over the bucket of oats while running from a rooster that had probably been part of a cockfighting ring in The Enchanted Forest and nearly broke all the eggs... which the currently screaming toddler had found hilarious.

Thankfully, as snow began to fall again, Neal turned off of Marine Drive into what seemed to be Storybrooke's coastal working-class neighborhood. Unlike the pastoral farmlands where Emma's parents (and Zelena, not that he cared to think about her) now lived, the "urban" center they'd relocated from, or the affluent suburbs where the rest of their family resided, there were no big fancy Tudor, Victorian, Colonial, and Cape Cod homes with pristine paint-jobs or spacious acreage populated by horses, cows, or immaculately kept topiaries.

This part of town harbored a mix of identical and crowded shotgun and townhouses at the far inlet end of the commercial marina, transitioning to slightly larger lots of modest Cottage, Craftsman, and Bungalow homes with small detached garages where 4th Street curved and cut between sparsely wooded wetlands and the looming peak of the Cannery. The front yards here were mostly left open, a low fieldstone wall or chain link here and there, but not a white picket fence to be seen; and more than a few homes looked in need of a fresh coat of paint while the cars in the driveways were accumulating a new coat of rust.

Emma had mentioned over pizza very early that morning that her parents were less than thrilled about both the neighborhood and the house she'd chosen when, after a month, she could no longer take living with them on their farm. Apparently, Regina wasn't pleased either, given Henry had to live with her part of the time. But Neal didn't see anything overtly wrong with the neighborhood. It was a little more dilapidated than what he remembered of the town in general when he first arrived a little over a moth after the Dark Curse was broken. But while it probably wasn't what any parents, royal or not, would want for their little princess (or prince), it wasn't a slum or anything.

Emma's house _did_ look more in need of renovation than most, though...

Number 42 was a little Arts & Crafts Bungalow, red with white trim, 1 1/2 stories by the look from the curb, with a low-pitched roof, broad (and leaf-filled) eaves, and a porch with rotting gables that left the overhang listing toward the badly cracked driveway that had a barn style one car garage at the end with a sagging roof. The yard was overgrown with weeds that had gotten large enough that even though it was winter their hard wooden skeletons remained among the mud puddles and slushy piles of brown snow. And what remained of a dry-stacked stone wall was scattered in piles.

"Emma wasn't kidding about the 'fixer upper' part," Neal commented as he put the suburban in park in front of the narrow cement walkway that led up to the porch. "Looks more like 'barely standing'."

"It's not condemned at least," Henry shrugged. "Before the Sorcerer came to town and started squatting in it and used his magic to glamour it into looking like the other houses on the block, it was the town's crack house... according to Mom, anyway. She had Mr. K look up the records. I guess so Graham wouldn't have a reason to patrol here and notice the weird old geezer."

"Wait," Neal did a double take, "this is _Merlin's apprentice's_ house?"

"Merlin's _former_ apprentice's _former_ house," Henry corrected, unlatching his seatbelt and the passenger door. "Don't worry, there's no portal to Hell in it... that we've found, anyway. Just some... er..."

"Quirks like a feral garden gnome?"

As Neal got out said garden gnome about the size of a squirrel burst out of the weeds by the lopsided mailbox and went right for Henry's ankle with a snarl. The kid was ready, though, and had just retrieved a shovel from the back which he swung like a hockey stick, sending the animated lawn ornament into the yard across the street.

"It usually takes it a few minutes to recover," Henry remarked, exchanging the shovel for his still-bawling uncle with a grimace while Neal retrieved a box of donuts and two coffees from Granny's and the toddler's diaper and toy bag.

"Come on, Neal!" Henry bounced the kid, "we're going to get Emmy-Tarts. I swear. Just stop crying!"

His uncle sniffled, quieted blissfully - and then pointed a chubby finger over Henry's shoulder and squealed, "CRISSY! CRISSY!"

It was a weirdly manic squeal, Neal noted as he turned to look at a red and white 1950s era Crown Victoria that was rounding the corner down the block.

"Oh no!" Henry gasped while his uncle put his neck in a choking grip. "Get in the house! NOW!"

"Why? Who's Crissy?" Neal asked, confused, but that confusion turned irrelevant as the car revved its engine, accelerated so quickly it burned rubber, and showed no signs of slowing down as it angled toward Snow White's car.

They were running up the weed-patched front walk when it slammed into the back of the suburban hard enough that it jumped the curb and finished off the ailing mailbox. There had to be a spill-proof charm on the paper cups, Neal considered as they made it inside with both their bodies and breakfast intact.

"That is not a 'quirk'," Neal groused, watching through the window in the front door as the clearly driver-less car began doing donuts like it had just won the Daytona 500 and then peeled off in the direction of the marina.

"No," sighed Henry, "that's Christine, the geezer's old car. Mom named it after-"

"The Stephen King book she read once and gave her nightmares," Neal deduced, locking the door.

"It usually only comes out on full moons and re-parks itself in the garage before sunrise," Henry explained. "But it's been acting weirder than usual since the lunar eclipse that wasn't a real lunar eclipse, but magic is still a bit wonky here. Did Mom tell you that the sun rose and set in opposite directions for a week after the averted apocalypse? We still have some problems."

"Yeah, my father mentioned translocation magic issues," Neal recalled and Henry nodded.

"Anyway, we don't know if the Sorcerer got Christine here or like shrunk it down and brought it from another world like Cruella did with her car."

"I know Isaac got hers from a universe populated by sentient cars like Herbie, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and those Pixar movie cars. Maybe Christine's from the same world."

"You're serious!?" Henry sputtered.

Neal snorted. "No. But why not? We have a world with puppet men made from trees and pumpkins that turn into carriages. So why not have a realm of cars that run on flubber or something."

"EMMY-TARTS! EMMY-TARTS!" suddenly demanded the toddler now pounding on Henry's shoulder and squirming to get down.

"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!" growled Henry, putting little Neal down and taking the toddler's hand.

Neal followed with the coffee and donuts through the rather dark living room that had a bank of windows, two warn matching arm chairs, a loveseat, a soot-stained fireplace, and a large flatscreen that hung on the opposite wall.

"One of these things is not like the others," Neal quipped.

"Aunt Anna bought it and the DVR for me when she was my fake mom to make up for the dreamcatcher memory stealing thing," Henry explained. "Which didn't really make up for it since to use it I had to be at her place and Hook was always getting his greasy fingers on it and filling up the memory with _Black Sails_ and old episodes of _Saved By the Bell_. I didn't ask"

After setting his uncle in a chair at the formica and chrome table, Henry grabbed a couple of Pop-Tarts from the cupboard and put them in the toaster. He got a jug of milk out of the fridge and poured a plastic cup full for the bouncy toddler.

"Here's your Emmy-Tarts, squirt," Henry sighed, at last setting the cup down with a plate of two gooey Pop-Tarts.

"YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!"

Neal snorted as the little kid proceeded to make a complete mess of his face and the kitchen table. "Your grandparents must really be on a health food kick."

"Two words," groaned Henry as he got a donut out of the box, " _Kale_ and _quinoa_. But they make an exception for Mom. They keep trying to bribe her with pop-in breakfasts. I think for Grandpa it's really as much for him an excuse to eat real food as it is to try and get on Mom's good side. I don't know how well that works. They do it when I'm at Regina's. Mom's usually grouchy after, though, so I'm guessing it's not having the desired effect, probably because they used to do that with Aunt Anna in her house: drop in and make her pancakes... which led to her making pancakes for Hook, which lead to-"

"Yeah, I'm familiar with your aunt's... culinary skills," grimaced Neal. "I hope you didn't eat off any surfaces in her kitchen."

"I didn't even eat anything that wasn't prepackaged in her house," snorted Henry. "You know, I told her I didn't like pancakes anymore and after her momentary confusion she shrugged it off and accepted it and went back to making out with Hook and not even bothering to tell me to not skip school. Which I did, obviously. And my other mom grounded me for."

"At least Regina was trying to keep you honest. An odd turn for sure," mused Neal.

"MORE! MORE!" Emma's brother suddenly demanded, smacking the table with his chocolatey hands.

"I don't think we should give him more sugar. He hasn't built up a tolerance," Neal considered, wetting some paper towels.

"TV will work for awhile," shrugged Henry and he asked his uncle, "How about watching the parade on TV, squirt? It has horses."

"YAAAAAAY! PONIES!"

Once the toddler was on the couch watching the Rose Parade on the giant TV, squeeling about the ponies and floats while hugging a stuffed lobster, Henry gave Neal a quick tour of the small house. Downstairs was the livingroom, kitchen, a powder room, and the bedroom and bathroom that Henry was using. Upstairs was the master bedroom, bathroom, and a walk-in attic space that had been filled with boxes from New York and Boston and were in the process of being unpacked. There was a basement, of course, but they were still working on countering some of the jinxes and getting the mustiness out, Henry explained.

"It's small and kind of dumpy," Henry concluded, back in the kitchen for more donuts. "I guess after the Sorcerer died or maybe after The Black Fairy's curse reordered things, his magic wore off and it went to how it was before, minus the crackheads... unless he buried them in the basement. We didn't check. But people said it looked a bit dumpy on the outside even back then. The yard was always a mass of weeds that mostly blocked the house, I guess so it wasn't that noticeable from the street. I think the car wrecked the wall when Mr. Tillman tried to tow it after the bank got the house. So it's not anyone's normal dream home, but Mom likes it. I think it reminds of her a place she squatted in for awhile after getting out of prison."

"So this is her little beach... adjacent house," Neal mused, trying and failing to shut off the leaky faucet. "She always did want to live by the beach, but Tallahassee wasn't as close as we thought. She must have stayed in one of those tiny towns along the coast for a bit, before the owners showed up. Small towns aren't really a good place to get lost when you feel lost anyway. Just ends up being even more depressing."

"Yeah, probably. I mean, I have fake memories of it sort of, but I don't know what's real about them," shrugged Henry as they sat at the table, glancing into the livingroom to keep an eye on the smaller Neal. "I think she liked watching the fireflies in the evening, though. Too bad we don't have any here. I remember them from that one summer in New York. Probably that'd make the place a bit less depressing. Well, that and it being freezing outside with an insane car patrolling the neighborhood. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa would see the 'potential' Mom sees in it more if the weather was nice enough to start fixing up the yard, at least. Or if she'd just tell them why she likes it. They tend to fight more than talk."

Neal sipped his coffee and considered, "So, your mom's having a hard time readjusting, especially with her parents... when they're not stoned, anyway."

"She's not mad anymore, I don't think," Henry replied, "just hurt. Mom said things are different than she remembers. And that must be worse than realizing you were living by fake memories for a year. Finding out you and everyone you love got thrown into a fake universe created by unnatural magic and you're the only one who remembers how everything is supposed to be and you're stuck, cause that timeline was destroyed when the new one was created."

Shaking his head, Henry concluded, "I just wish I knew how to make it easier for Mom. Instead I just seem to be making it harder. That thing with Violet was so stupid. Even though I know now it's been Anna the past couple of years, I'm just used to my mom not being... available or even just caring that I'm having problems. But I can't tell Mom that, because then she feels guilty that she wasn't there, like it's her fault, when it's not. Everyone gets scared and makes stupid choices not realizing the consequences could be really bad. I sure screwed up getting the pen fixed."

"We all got duped, buddy," Neal reminded. "I made a deal with Zeus himself that got Hook brought back to life, and re-inflicting him on all the worlds is at least as bad as enslaving them to Mt. Olympus."

"True," snorted Henry. "The gods don't have syphilis. But I still feel bad, not so much about that - because how could anyone have known? - but not realizing Emma wasn't _Emma_. I know Mom's disappointed in me too, even if she says that she isn't. I fought so hard to defeat the Evil Queen, to get my mom to be the good person I knew she could be... but I didn't try to stop my other mom from turning into a worse person, because she was happier as that person. And because everyone else was happy that she was happy."

Henry grimaced as he amended, "And the thing is? I don't think any of us besides Hook liked the way she was happy and just went along with it thinking, 'well if, everyone else is okay with him turning her into a jerk who forgets where her kid is, then it must be true love and that means we need to support it'. We were all just... lying because everyone else was lying... and what kind of family does that?"

"Honestly?" Neal chuffed, resting his elbows on the tabletop, "I think a lot of them. Especially ones that don't know each other very well."

"But how do you fix that," groaned Henry, "when no one wants to be themselves? Or they do but it always just sends up with arguing and hurt feelings?"

"Other than being forced to share a body and mind with the relative you're ticked at while being tortured by a magical psychopath?" shrugged Neal. "But I don't recommend that."

"Yeah, I don't think Mom would go for that after just getting separated from her sister," Henry agreed, then added with a sniggered, "Violet probably wouldn't mind melding with Mary Contrary, though."

Neal's brows furrowed. "Mary Contrary... as in _Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row_?"

"Yep," grinned Henry. "Not sure how her parents were blind-sided when she came out at the winter formal, but that nursery rhyme is definitely not about an old rich lady with a lot of servants bringing her tea and cucumber sandwiches..."

* * *

While Neal and Henry were catching up, Emma was parking her father's truck outside of Regina's house. She'd left the Bug to air out after using the coin vacuum behind Marine Garage (since it was closed for the day) and after combing through the old Chevy for evidence and finding none, she finally arrived at the mayor's house at what she hoped was a reasonable enough hour that Regina didn't bite her head off, having been very unhappy about the early AM phone call.

Regina probably wasn't thrilled either that Neal was back from the dead, what with pretending she didn't hate having to share Henry with Emma. Anna might have been fooled that the other woman had changed her mind, but then Anna barely cared that Henry existed in the first place and her only "sharing" related concern had been annoyance at having to spend any time with Henry _without_ Hook there to hang onto like a barnacle so she could guilt-trip the teenager into agreeing to pretend he considered her douchebag husband a father figure.

At least Emma shared a hatred of the pirate with the other woman (even if for different reasons), so there was that common ground, anyway. Hopefully, Neal's return wouldn't disrupt the tentative alliance they had formed after Neverland and which Emma was trying to keep her word on despite disagreeing with a number of things Regina had done (and which Anna and the rest of her family had supported) since they battled Zelena.

Emma still harbored a certain degree of anger that Regina's serial-killer-like need to retain trophies of her magical victories both left the Dark Curse laying around for Pan to use _and_ stuffed Zelena's necklace in a box which allowed the crazy bitch to reacquire her magic instead of _destroying the fucking thing as would have been the logical thing to do particularly after not destroying the fucking Dark Curse incantation which led Pan to use it and thus gave Zelena the ability to fuck them all over in the first place!_

So, yeah, Emma was still embittered over the nasty habits that Henry's adoptive mother seemed hard-pressed to cure herself of. But the gods _were_ manipulating things and Regina _was_ the only one of all of them to even consider that _someone_ was writing their stories to fit their own agenda rather than allowing them the free will to make their own mistakes _or_ fix them. She'd gotten it a bit wrong, pegging Isaac for the mastermind rather than just one of a hierarchy of minions and so saw no issue with Henry taking over, but at least by virtue of trying to not be the Evil Queen anymore, going against the fate she was written for, she'd become self-aware enough to realize they were pawns.

Even if Emma wasn't going to be BFFs with Regina, she did respect that. And for stepping up to be there for Henry in a way she hadn't been previously when _Anna_ went full deadbeat brawling white trash homicidal rapist-marrying skank mom worthy of a _Jerry Springer_ episode. The rest of Emma's family either hadn't seemed to give a shit what disgusting, depraved, misogynist shitfest her son was exposed to - or considered the lot of it _adorable_.

Because of that, Emma still felt hard-pressed to accept her mother's drug-induced apology. Maybe it was that she didn't want some vague notion of Snow White and Prince Charming as perfect heroes destroyed, her parents or not, reduced to fuck-ups like everyone else... because then what heroes were there to look up to?

On that depressing thought, Emma finally opened the door, sucking in a deep breath of cold air to try and push back the exhaustion that had her body begging for a nap at least.

108 Mifflin Street still had twinkling lights on the apple tree and a homemade holiday wreath on the door. The house smelled of gingerbread, cinnamon, and peppermint when Emma was let into the foyer by a Regina dressed in her rare off-mayor-duty attire of sweats and a t-shirt.

"Think you could turn this smell into a car freshener?" Emma inquired. "Tillman took his kids up to a cabin for the holiday, so I couldn't even guilt him into cleaning my car today."

"Karma? You did steal it," Regina reminded. "And it's an even bigger piece of junk than the POS I cursed your mother with."

"Yes, well, I stole if fair-and-square and it's supposed to be mine to make crappier, not my skanky sister or our magically incontinent father," complained Emma. "Is there at least a magic... smoke bomb or something you can make to counter the magic in the pee and barf stains so it'll come out easier? It's like part of the prank was making it so you can't get the mess out!"

"Probably an unintended secondary effect of the potion," Regina sussed her idea, "though I suppose that could be considered part of the 'fun' depending on who's responsible. You have the... samples?" she asked, nose wrinkling in disgust.

"Yeah," Emma grimaced in returned, asking, "Do we really have to take the tunnel?"

"I'm not walking through the muddy mess of the cemetery and Gold called last night about translocational magic being on the fritz again, so I don't want to get stuck there if it goes out again. I'm starting to think it's less to do with the magical equalization process and more possibly something those Little Camelot weirdoes are up to, but he says I'm being paranoid. Anyway, the faster we can identify the potion, the sooner I can get back to-"

"Baking?" Emma noted as they entered the kitchen.

"Yes. There's a Council Meeting tomorrow," Regina explained. "Helps to bribe the members with sweets into actually showing up _and_ staying the entire session. If there's one more abstention from voting on the new charter articles, particularly when I have to deal with a public hearing for questions from residents on Friday, most of them about Little Camelot, I will crush some hearts."

"So... you're spending your day off doing work for work?"

"Says the woman who has done almost nothing but bitch about her sister, father, and brother-in-law not even doing work at work for the past two months," Regina reminded, grabbing a coat and opening the door to the basement.

"Yeah, not sure why you never called them on that since it just made your job harder," Emma shrugged, snagging a handful of cookies off a tray on the stove.

"Partly to distract from the things I'd lost," said Regina. "Partly because I don't exactly deserve to have it easy after the things I've done, not matter what your mother and sister think. Partly because I thought it would be amusing to make fun of them if their laziness and lack of training and law-abiding resulted in some massive fuckup. I do have some... vague interest in your father's safety if only to keep your mother from becoming a weepy mess. But I was never under any delusion that any of them were equipped for law enforcement and sometimes you have to let the people you care about learn their own lessons the hard way. One of the few honest things my mother taught me."

Regina shrugged at the bottom of the stairs and concluded, "It would have been more of a headache to force them out of their jobs and find someone competent who was less corrupt, quite frankly, given their corrupt activities were generally an extension of extreme nepotism rather than malice or greed. And Hook's malice and greed was always undermined by his incompetence and sex and alcohol addiction," she snorted before opening a magical passageway in the basement wall.

"Yeah, that's definitely accurate," quipped Emma, chewing on sugar cookie and following into the tunnel. "Same reason you let my mom be mayor?"

"Sex and alcohol addiction?" Regina quipped, earning a snort from Emma. "I did want a break after fighting my sister. I didn't think Snow would screw it up _in a week_ and we'd spend the next _year_ dealing with rolling blackouts while trying to sneak large and complicated electrical equipment onto the midnight ghost supply train, though."

"How exactly does that thing work?"

"It's classified."

"Which means you have no idea!" Emma sassed.

"Watch out for the rats down here. I haven't had time to put out new traps. And they bite."

"Funny," smirked Emma, then she asked. "Do you use special magic ones? I feel bad about putting out traps or poison. I mean, what if one of them is really a person that got turned into a rat? Is there a spell you can put on rat traps so they won't trap people rats?"

"Probably," Regina shrugged, "but if they're stupid enough to get stuck in a rat trap, is really worth sparing them? We have enough still-human idiots to contend with. Might as well weed out the ones that got turned into rats."

"That seems... wrong," Emma wrinkled her nose before biting into another cookie and gagging. "Ugh! Raisins! That's even more wrong! Why would you put raisins in a chocolate chip cookie, Regina!?"

"No one told you to eat my food, Emma."

"I'm a guest. You're supposed to offer me food," Emma argued. "I guess you only offer the poison kind when you're not entertaining."

"Well, you did destroy my kitchen," Regina reminded, "having a spat with your sister."

"Better than ransacking the middle of Main Street with yours."

"Oh, well played!" Regina scoffed.

"Gimme a break," Emma grumbled. "I'm spending New Year's Day in a freezing dungeon to analyze my parents' urine while eating raisin cookies instead of making tacos," she made a crude gesture, "with Neal and ordering Chinese, because someone wanted my parents to hallucinate evil versions of my brother's favorite cartoons."

Regina made a horrified face. "I really don't want to know what you and your baby daddy are getting up to - let alone your euphemisms for it. It's bad enough knowing your sister and her idiot husband call it 'getting coffee' and 'making pancakes'."

"It's actually my parents that call it 'making tacos' because Henry and I walked in on them when we were supposed to be leaving for Granny's taco party. Neal and I used to call it-"

"Having unprotected sex in stolen cars and motel rooms because you were both uneducated teenagers with eight grade reading levels?"

"Hey, we did use condoms," Emma argued, "and I don't see your college degree. You didn't even learn useless rich kid school things like how to dance, Regina. And since you made me fake remember getting my GED I was actually planning to get one for real, but I didn't get around to it what with being body-snatched by my sister, the worlds almost ending, and trying to clean up a corrupt Sheriff's Department."

"Plus the morning sickness."

Emma blinked. "What?"

The former Evil Queen rolled her eyes. "You're obviously pregnant."

"I... you... how did you...?" Emma sputtered out.

"You started drinking decaff, changed from Anna's Pop-Tarts to your old bear claws and the shortly thereafter started getting the same jelly donuts Henry likes that he made sure I knew his father also liked. Plus, I went to the Station to get a file one day and found you eating an _entire_ pumpkin pie in the interrogation room. _And_ you took a half dozen bathroom breaks the last time you had to attend a town hall. Put that together with you filling out your uniform shirt even more impressively than when you were obsessed with wearing that black padded push-up bra, I can only assume in a sad attempt to compete with my cleavage while trying to undermine my authority..."

Emma crossed her arms over her chest. "You check out by boobs!?"

Regina rolled her eyes and replied, "Back in The Enchanted Forest I was known for my stunning and unmatched cleavage and imprisoned or executed anyone who tried to claim they had more spectral tits than me. It's an old habit. Don't worry, 'more impressive' doesn't mean you were ever any competition. A hormone boost may be making your less evil twins perkier, but you still couldn't pull off a low-cut gown without a corset."

"Wow, thanks!" Emma glared, feeling self-conscious now of her rather small breasts. Anna was never self-conscious of her body... which was maybe why she let herself look like crap most of the time...

"Would you prefer if I was secretly lusting after you?" Regina snorted. "In spite of your homophobic and possessive brother-in-law sticking to Anna like glue and heaping on the lusty cologne to make sure I didn't seduce his woman with dark man-hating lesbian magic, I don't actually want to sleep with either of you."

"That's a relief," snorted Emma before she asked, "Wait, _you_ knew about Hook's rapey perfume? How do both you and Henry know about it and I didn't? Anna was always digging through Hook's sea chest like some creepy, jealous, distrustful harpy... who liked to touch his murder rings and stroke his rum flask when she was masturbating..." she concluded with a shudder.

"Something else I didn't need to know," glowered Regina. "And probably because Anna was the intended seduction and so would be magically incapable of discovering it. Not that she needed it. I switched it out once for a week with an identical smelling inert potion and she was just as horny as ever. Regardless, you were merged with her and so shared her obviousness."

"If only I could be oblivious of her masturbating," Emma groaned and picked raisins out of a cookie as she added, "And walking in on my parents having sex. Twice. Another reason I left the farm house. I don't think they even noticed that time, thankfully."

"I walked in on them once back during our year in The Enchanted Forest," recalled Regina. "Very... missionary."

Emma snorted, then shared, "Speaking of confessionals, my mother had a sort of emotional breakdown while she was stoned last night and apologized for everything. I feel bad that I don't know if I can forgive her. Though she doesn't even remember anything she said, so... I don't know. I'm just tired of things being so... tense between us. But then if I just... leave it all in the past... I'm still not sure they really get how much they hurt me."

"Perhaps not," Regina agreed and told her, "When I met your mother I thought she was a sweet, if naive, little girl that wasn't nearly as spoiled rotten as my cousin who was destined to inherit King Xavier's throne. I entertained foolish dreams of escaping my life and not just marrying Daniel, but perhaps using my saving your mother as a way to find employment in her kingdom, teach her to ride, be part of something that wasn't so... poisoned as my mother and the rest of my father's family and kingdom."

"And then she told your mother your secret," sighed Emma as they entered Regina's vault where a potions/chemistry set was already set up.

"And then she forgot about me like a doll she had grown tired of playing with," Regina frowned deeply and took the plastic urine sample cups with 'Storybrooke Sheriff's Department' on the labels that were usually required for drug and alcohol testing of DUI arrests.

As Regina used an eyedropper to put her ex-step-daughter's pee in a flask and then began adding other potions ingredients in the same fashion, she continued, "All the kindness and compassion I thought I had seen in your mother suddenly seemed gone entirely. All she cared for were dresses and horses and royal trips with her father while I was left in that castle to rot. No riding lessons. No gifts brought back. I was a novelty that quickly became boring, a new adventure that wasn't nearly so appealing, perhaps even disappointing, in a castle where I was no one's hero, just a distant heir to another throne who was trying and failing at being a queen thanks to my predecessor."

"I know my mom had her mother on a pedestal," Emma grimaced. "According to my dad, she didn't take finding out what Eva did to your mother via that seance very well. He said he caught her throwing her tiara in the trash. But she said she was glad to have found out so if their second kid was a girl, they wouldn't unknowingly name her after an awful woman who tricked everyone into thinking she was a saint."

Snorting, Emma considered, "And my father wouldn't name him 'Robert' if it was a boy because he thought his father was a drunk asshole, only he actually wasn't, so they named my brother after my dead lover, which is still really messed up even if he's not dead anymore."

"You can't throw a stone around here without hitting someone with parental issues that screwed them up," shrugged Regina. "I always knew Snow's mother had given her expectations that I could never meet, but I had assumed that even as I loathed her, fantasized about strangling her with that necklace her mother had given her, that she would still adore me, want to do all the things she had blathered on about when we met. That would make my revenge sweeter, to destroy her love for me. But instead she was entirely apathetic. When she realized I was no one special - or perhaps simply not someone who kissed her boots and told her how wonderful she was, she moved on to other interests as though it wasn't her initial delight at making me her traveling companion that caused the ruin of my own plans and trapped me in a life I never wanted for myself."

"And so you waited years to get your revenge," snorted Emma. "Seems like you could have walked out any time."

"With my mother always finding an escape from Wonderland?" scoffed Regina. "Hardly. And not when I still had much to learn from Rumplestiltskin... and then learned about the curse he required casting. I could patiently endure an elderly idiot for a husband and a spoiled brat for a stepdaughter once I had reformed my grief and pain into cruelty and coldness. The promise of that curse shaping the happy ending I wanted - or some version of it based on the parameters - was a clear objective I could focus on and tune out the unhappiness... but also anything that brought me happiness and comfort in the process."

"Like your father."

"Yes. I became like my mother. My father was far from perfect, allowing her to do horrible things to me," Regina sighed. "But he knew that he was weak and hoped I would be stronger than he was. He sacrificed his heart, his life, in the hope that I had enough goodness in me still to feel regret and for that regret to grow strong enough to purge the darkness that had infected my heart because of my mother and yours."

Shaking her head, Regina explained, "I don't hate Snow any longer for telling that secret, but I do still blame her. A part of me will always despise the sort of person she is to have done that and not even consider apologizing, seeing the pain she had caused me, until I had cursed her, taken away her child, ruined her own happiness as she had mine."

Regina swirled a potions beaker around and mused with a grimace, "All children are naive, but Snow seemed to revel in that naiveté. It saved her from ever having to feel responsible for causing anyone pain, so by the time I poisoned her father and plotted to kill her, I had no sympathy left for her. She was old enough to decide the kind of person she would be, old enough to have given up that childish naiveté for the knowledge of adulthood. She did not want to be burdened by the cruelty of the world even if that meant remaining a dithering little idiot skipping through fields of flowers and brushing her horse. She wanted to remain ignorant of everything not as pure as her reflection. When I realized that, I no longer had any scrupulous about killing her."

After a pause to pull a dropper full from the beaker and deposit the contents into another potion, Regina remarked, "I suppose what still aggravates me is that even after her apologies for Daniel and for my mother, Snow has never seemed to realize why I truly despised her. She even thanked me for teaching her the meaning of 'hope' by branding her a traitor. But I didn't teach her _hope_. My cruelty forced her to be the person she had rejected that led to my despising her so, or to at least pretend to be in order to survive and reclaim her throne.

Snow has the ability to be a good person, as I suppose most of us do," the former Evil Queen considered while swirling the flask, "but if she's not fighting against some evil foe and is left to focus on the other aspects of her life... she's still picking posies, pretending that her family is fine, happy, every choice made something destined by true love in the same way she deluded herself that her parents had a happy, loving marriage while the truth is that her slowwitted father could barely bring himself to bed the snake who tricked him into marriage after discovering Eva's duplicitousness both in getting him to marry her and in ensuring he did not get her with child for a decade.

"I doubt your mother's conception had any love involved. And I would be unsurprised if it wasn't my mother who clued Leopold in that his wife was faking miscarriages," she concluded with a scoff.

The potion turned black then and Regina reported, "Or perhaps causing them intentionally. Your mystery potion contains a large quality of nearly spoiled manticore venom. Not much good for more than causing violent hallucinations if mixed properly with other ingredients to cancel out the paralytic effect, but it's to be avoided by pregnant women in any solution. Brothels back home buy the expired venom second hand from potions distributors to take care of their bastard problem. It'll work maybe six months after going bad, but the process is increasingly unpleasant. So it's probably a good thing you opted out of joining your parents at that party."

Emma winced at that thought, a hand going to her stomach as she asked, "Can you tell me anything else about the potion?"

"It's brewed by an amateur but not a complete novice. An apprentice, perhaps. I can send you a list of everyone in town I know to have been a potions master back in The Enchanted Forest and assuming they cooperated could identify a potion brewed by a student of theirs. _But_ given manticore venom is difficult to come by even for the wealthy back home-"

"You're thinking it's from whatever stash Arthur had," Emma deduced.

"Possibly. That encampment is rather lawless despite what Aurora and Philip claim about turning it into a legitimate settlement," Regina sighed while cleaning up her potions lab. "And the majority of the people there are unknown to the majority of people in Storybrooke whether they're Arthur's loyalists who feared execution if they returned home or the Land of Untold Stories people, not all of whom certainly fled to escape an annoying parent or... whatever it is Nemo and Hook's brother were escaping... perhaps family dinners with Hook."

"I don't suppose you can issue some special order so I can look around the compound?"

The look Regina returned said 'are you an idiot?' before she answered, "I'd like to start the New Year without a war. It's probably just George's minions trying to humiliate your parents, get the rest of the council members questioning your father's fitness for the alderman job and your mother to be in charge of their children's education. If you start digging around where you have no clear jurisdiction, they'll be trying to replace you with Nottingham. It already won't sit well with those traditionalist types finding out the sheriff is having another child out of wedlock. But if you're looking to rectify that second part, I did save your sister's bouquet..."

Emma threw a glower at the other woman. "Funny. No. Even if I wanted to marry Neal now, which I don't, between my parents and Henry I haven't even had time alone with Neal to tell him that I'm pregnant, which should probably come before any vows are exchanged."

"So you're not back together for more than bootycalls?" Regina asked, brow raised as they reentered the tunnel to return to her house.

Emma huffed. "No! We're together. We're just not... like everyone else in this stupid town that gets married and pops out babies after knowing each other a month, because that's how it's done. The pregnancy was obviously not planned and it doesn't mean I'm going to allow my father to force us to get married at sword-point or something idiotic like is probably tradition. My virtue was ruined by those standards a long time ago and I'm not going to pull some hypocritical white dress bullshit nonsense like my sister to pretend I'm a virginal princess who needs to exchange some creepy vows of eternal faithfulness to have a 'happy beginning'. Right now my happy beginning is making sure Henry has done his book report, returning my brother to my parents house, eating a large box of garlic shrimp from Dragon Express, and finally finishing a very delayed orgasm."

"Are you sure your house can take even the brief amount of time and effort Neal can put into the task without collapsing?" Regina joked.

Now Emma really glared. "Hey, Neal has more stamina without using magical dick pills than that scummy pirate, believe me. I unfortunately can make that comparison. But even if he didn't, I'd rather my sex didn't play out like a rape fetish fantasy on some Dark Web site where sexual predators post their conquest videos."

"Fair point."

"And my house is not condemned, okay?" Emma huffed. "It just needs some work. When I have the money to afford it. But I was borderline broke when I moved here thanks to my sister's taste in luxury apartments and expensive designer shoes that gave me bunions eating up any savings I had from my court-ordered restitution job. And then you paid me shit as a deputy. I didn't even get a 401K. And all the money I made in New York went to rent and Henry's private school, which is why I was shopping at a skeazy little thrift store for furniture and ended up dating a flying monkey whose boss cursed a guy to take my magic so my sister took over my pitiful bank account and got a terrible mortgage on a massive house with crazy insurance rates and has some kind of fight going with the bank because she relocated it to a red-tagged lot that was declared unstable due to the mine shaft underneath so she could use it to store an evil sword and have hallucinations without anyone noticing and they keep sending me the bills!"

"Ah, yes," snorted Regina. "Anna was quite annoyed when Fiona's spell returned her house to its original lot and erased her sex dungeon. How shocking that breaking a Dark Curse doesn't restore a Dark One dungeon created during a previous Dark Curse utilized to get out of paying for a house. That family is probably lucky Hook ever coughed up the doubloons, correct lot or not."

"I'm pretty sure my father strong-armed him into it," shrugged Emma. "Probably threatened to reveal some other horrific secret that would make Anna angry for about a day before nasty make-up sex ensued. Those two idiots can't even have a normal argument. It's all about murder and shit and then being okay with the murdering but not the lying about it. They deserve each other, I guess. It's just no one else deserves them in their lives."

"So enjoy not having them in yours for the next few months," Regina advised, walking up the basement stairs. "Better the ghosts of their interactions with your parents and Henry making things complicated than the actual pair of sluts making them ten times more complicated. As hard as it may be to reconnect, it could be worse: you could be having family meals in their cum-covered kitchen. At least yours only has cockroaches rather than the diseased ejaculations from pirate cock."

"I suppose that is a bright side," Emma conceded. "At least we're dealing with tough, conflicting emotions like mature adults without those two grown-ass idiots behaving like horny teenagers to avoid acknowledging the difficult facts of their relationships and influencing everyone else by magical STD osmosis to do the same."

"Exactly."

Emma pocked a few gingerbread cookies that earned a sour look from her son's adoptive mother. "What? Ginger is good for morning sickness. Also, you tried to murder me at least two times, Regina, and once as an innocent baby, so that should get me free _no raisins_ cookies for life."

"Fine," Regina grated and physically steered Emma back toward the front door. "But you're coming to that hearing on Friday and we are pausing the session for every one of your bathroom breaks. I am not fielding any questions for you because your craving for twenty ounce big gulp blue slurpie knockoffs and compressed bladder have you running to pee every fifteen minutes."

"Fine," Emma rolled her eyes.

"Good. And... I suppose congratulations," Regina told her with a forced smile at her doorstep. "On both the undead lover and the baby."

"You don't have to pretend you're not bitter, Regina," Emma shook her head. "Too much bullshit tact in this family is what got me effectively married off to a serial rapist without a single objection."

"Fine then," Regina shrugged. "Your dead lover is back and you're apparently ridiculously fertile. It disgusts me. It doesn't feel fair. But... considering I did 'try to murder you at least two times' and killed many other people and had many more killed on my order... all of which is many times worse than any crime you committed, including leaving that woman to bleed to death, I will concede that I am not in a position to hold it against you even if I won't be attending any baby showers."

"Yeah, not really planning on that myself," Emma retorted. "My mother would plan it and it would be pink and lacy... even if I was having a boy, probably. Would that be better or worse?" she wondered. "With Henry, I mean. I haven't told him either. A boy or a girl? He'll probably be upset either way. I was..."

"He's a teenager. He's always upset," Regina told her. "And you stopped emotionally developing at eighteen..."

"So did you."

"Just don't pathologically ignore him like your sister or belittle him like Hook or burden him with unfair expectations and discipline as I did," Regina told her, "and he'll get over it without riding off through a portal for a round of cousin fucking."

"I hope so..."

"For what it's worth," Regina amended, "this is a world of magic, magic from _our_ world and that magic tends to carry the sins of parents onto their children, however unfairly... and occasionally the sins of the children onto the parents when you throw time travel into the mix. Your true love cleanse isn't going to fix that overnight."

Emma let out a sigh. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes magic really sucks."

"And sometimes it brings the dead back to life," Regina pointed out, "so go get your shrimp and orgasms so I can get back to making my famous pot brownies."

"Did you say po-"

"Good day, Miss Swan," Regina cut her off, slamming the door in her face.

* * *

 **AN** : Dumb & Dumber have now said there are many Authors as every book has one. But then every book isn't just for a single magical world, so that sounds like a half-assed change of canon for their shitty reboot. In any case, if that's true, then the destruction of books in the Sorcerer's mansion in Part I was the destruction of works by many contemporary individuals who likely had successors just as Henry succeeded Isaac writing their own sequels just as it seems Season 7 has a new book but also called _Once Upon A Time_. So Emma and Co. freed a lot of worlds and prevented a future in which others would be enslaved as (in my version) Zelena's time travel began a splintering of reality, a cascade failure that Zeus was trying to prevent by manipulating Henry and which Hera (through manipulation of The Sorcerer's Apprentice) escalated so that Emma and Anna could restore as much magical balance as possible, eliminating "fake" realities that had already sprung into being like The Land of Untold Stories and Wish Realm, and also (as of the Season 7 spoilers) those multiple Enchanted Forests that includes what I call Ethnic Enchanted Forest, home to Cinderella 2.0. In my universe, The Apprentice, before kidnapping Henry, visited other Authors, used the Shears of Destiny on them/killed them/took their quills and books and saved Henry for last since he had to carry out his plot in Storybrooke. As such, a number of contemporary quills and books were in Storybrooke and Anna, Belle, and Rumple successfully unbound those magical world from Mt. Olympus, freeing the ones that were versions of the original timeline and "erasing" the ones that came into being as a result of compounding paradoxes and contributed to magic reaching a breaking point (with or without any gods helping it along). I like to think that the people in the worlds that ceased to exist, like Wish Robin, are soulless reproductions and they replaced the freed souls from The Underworld which Cruella has turned into a _Westworld-_ like theme park to entertain the gods... and just maybe, in a few hundred years, those magical androids can earn their own real free will!

 **Quotes** :

"THIS, children, is what we call "MATURITY": grown-ass people dealing with tough, conflicting emotions and not behaving like horny teenagers to avoid acknowledging the difficult facts of their relationship" - zoe19blink on tumblr

 **Next up** : Flashbacks and orgasms.


	19. Dandelions

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER NINETEEN**

 **DANDELIONS**

 **(flashback)**

It had been one month, Snow realized, as she finished sorting the clothes from the dryer into a basket, since her world was turned upside down. Which wasn't a new occurrence in her life. That seemed to happen with uncomfortable regularity, to the point that she had almost become desensitized to magical battles and worlds falling apart at the seams.

This last time had been different though. Well, there was the magical battle and worlds falling apart and the revelation that the book she gave her grandson was a tool in a centuries old enslavement of her world that led to the creation of "fairytales" in the first place. That certainly was a bit of a shock. As was learning from the gods (or goddesses) that the worlds starting to fall apart was the horrible magical consequence of Zelena's time spell that would have led to utter destruction and death from compounding paradoxes and splintering parallel realities with increasingly incoherent "stories" and chronologies if Hera hadn't found a way help them get free so the damage could be repaired before they reached a point of no return. And, well, it was also a bit disheartening to discover that the witch going back in time had infused the magic of the past with that dark spell, infected it in a way that darkened everything and everyone in the timeline that was born from it while the original one that was "meant to be" (in as much as anything selfishly controlled by the gods could be) had completely ceased to exist like it never had been at all.

Well, not entirely. Which was where things actually got complicated.

It lived on through Emma. That was a paradox that came with the revelation that really turned Snow's world on its end. Her daughter, Emma, the child she'd held in her arms for a few moments after her birth, had physically ceased to be in the same sort of way that her son's namesake had vanished when her grandson's grandfather magically absorbed Neal to stave off his death. Somehow, Emma had become a subverted consciousness with her twin sister, a twin none of them had known existed but who had lived in that state for 30 years since shortly after conception when Snow had Merlin's apprentice cast that spell to remove her daughter's potential for darkness.

Wasn't that a kicker?

The dreams she and Charming had were not an "either/or" warning, but rather a simple statement of the truth that she was carrying twins - and one was afflicted by a family blood curse that predestined her toward darkness in juxtaposition to her savior sister.

Snow had two daughters. Two adult daughters. Two identical twin adult daughters: One who came to town, led by the child she herself gave up as a teenager, was elected Sheriff, and fought to do what was right, and gave up her true love more than once to save them. And one who usurped her sister's occupation without even knowing she'd done so, who fought selfishly for her singular happiness, and who was now realm-jumping in a pirate ship with her true love who was also the stepfather of her sister's late lover who, also unaware of her identify, had made a deal with Zeus two years ago so the undeserving man that Emma's twin loved could get a second lease on life.

It was hardly a fair situation. And it was one that Snow and her husband found themselves stuck in the middle of quite precariously. Because no matter how Zelena's spell might have tainted all of them and their stories, made them less heroes and more anti-heroes who occasionally bordered on villainy, they still _knew_ those things were wrong and chose to do them anyway.

Snow sighed as she climbed the stairs and grimaced at the open door to the guest room where Anna and Killian had stayed a week when their house was being fumigated for those magical bedbugs Nemo accidentally brought from Wonderland. It was an office/library now, switched temporarily with the room on the other side of the landing when Emma refused to occupy the same space where her sister and brother-in-law had slept... and done more than sleep.

On the one hand, Snow still cherished her first face-to-face meeting with her true love. Those weird memories of the couple who'd helped her, knowing after the fact they were her daughter and son-in-law, that their stories were intertwined, had filled her with happiness - and a certainty that Emma and Killian were meant to be, however odd a pairing and the pirate initially repulsive. But now it was all rather a mess. That wasn't even Emma and it wasn't a sign of destiny, it was just two idiots falling down a portal created by a psychopath that altered how things had actually been and made life considerably more painful for Emma, the daughter who'd apparently seen a parallel in her own too-short story of true love with their original one and now felt doubly betrayed and aggrieved to not even have that as validation of the brief period of true happiness in her life before Pinocchio of all people metaphorically ripped up the happy story she was writing for herself to give her a tragic one instead.

Snow still held onto her own story, turned the pages in Henry's no-longer-magical book with a feeling of sweet nostalgia, but there was a bitter-sweetness to it now, and a wish that things could be put back to how they were meant to be, a meeting without any contrivances or meddling that, apparently, would have led to them all being free of Mt. Olympus in a far less chaotic, nearly-apocalyptic, and tragic way had Zelena been defeated and Anna never trampled around in a past where she had no business being.

But Anna had. That was done.

And Hera and Emma's magic could only restore so much of what should be. This universe was different from the one that came before. Maybe it was now purged of that invasive darkness, that magical cancer, and the fake realities that had splintered off it like some replicating computer virus were no more, so there would be no more "untold stories" blimps falling out of the sky or a "wish" grandson popping in to exact revenge for the murder of his "not real" grandparents. They could all try to be their best selves now without it feeling like their good potential was being suffocated by twice the bad - as it must have for Maleficent's daughter Lily.

More amends that would need to be made, if the sorceress and her daughter ever returned to Storybrooke.

That didn't mean, however, that things were ever going to be set right with Emma... or be as good as they used to be with Anna when she returned. Perhaps Snow had gotten a few months with her first born and a few years with her second where she felt like they could be a real - if weird - family, and now that time was passed. Anna had a curse to fight that without her sister's subconscious influence stripped away her empathy and love for her blood family and Emma had anger and bitterness to fight over all of the selfish and even cruel things her sister did in her name with her family's approval and encouragement - as well as the grieving process she'd never gotten the chance to go through after Neal was killed, thanks to Zelena and her sister.

They weren't handling it all very well, Snow knew. She worried endlessly about how Anna was doing, unable to communicate with her except for one brief and unsettling interaction using Gold's dream powder. And any conversation with Emma led to arguments as the rest of them struggled to be mindful that for her it was like the last two years were a movie of someone else's life, someone who just happened to look like her but was otherwise, as far as Emma saw it, nothing like her. They'd all moved on from that crazy post-curse period. Neal was buried, Emma's brother namesaked for him, and they muddled through the mess with Ingrid, the Queens of Darkness, the Dark Ones, Camelot, The Underworld, the plight of saviors, and a happy beginning to finally put all of that painful past behind them.

Emma was still in that past. Emma was still processing the ways in which Ingrid's stolen memories had affected other memories and decisions she might have made differently (particularly with Neal that could have saved him). She was still angry over the spell that took away her dark potential (and stuck her with a parasitic twin) and how all of them handled the rest of it. She didn't feel included in the happy beginning they all sang and danced about, because she hadn't been. Her song had been used without permission by her sister and the spell that came with it tacked on a wedding song and dance number that seemed abhorrent to Emma on multiple levels.

All if it made things... complicated.

But Snow hadn't given up. Maybe she hadn't fought hard enough for her daughter's goodness before, but she was fighting for Emma's happiness now. Or at least she was trying to even if for every step forward it felt like she was pushed two feet back. It was like fighting the war against Regina all over again, full of accusations and failures and grief, just minus the armies and the curses. The armies and curses were easier. Snow was used to those.

And so her heart pounded more violently than it did on any battlefield as she knocked on the closed door across the hall and waited for Emma's response.

Getting none, and not surprised, Snow turned the knob and opened the door to find Emma with earbuds in, dark-rimmed glasses (Snow was still getting used to those) perched low on her nose as she flipped through a familiar old book from her childhood first seen in her box that second week she was in Storybrooke.

As Emma's glasses slipped down her nose and she pushed them back into place, Snow had to wonder if her wearing them had less to do with differentiating herself from her sister than having something to hide behind.

After a few minutes watching Emma staring at a page without seeming to notice her presence and maybe not even the words on the page in front of her, Snow cleared her throat loudly to get her eldest daughter's attention.

Head snapping up, Emma pulled her earbuds out and nodded at the basket of laundry. "Oh... thanks... Just leave them. I'll put them away."

"It's no trouble," Snow insisted, taking out the folded articles of clothing, of which there were few. Emma's pre-Storybrooke non-bountyhunter clothes were some of the first things Anna had donated to charity when she had clothes from Emma's apartment in New York shipped here, and while Emma had used magic with Regina's help to try to track down her wardrobe, most had ended up with the forest-dwelling refugees and were just... well... destroyed from overuse. Which was initially part of the reason Emma had stuck with wearing her Sheriff's uniform after the official Town Hall meeting that re-appointed her to the job.

That took getting used to as well after the years of jeans and leather jackets... followed by Anna's increased wearing her preferred floral and lacy things even on the job. David had never worn a uniform either, at least not until Emma did and he temporarily, part-time, rejoined the department to help her straighten out the administrative mess it turned out Anna and Hook had left behind. Even if David complained about being parted from his beloved flannel and jeans, Snow secretly found some pride in cleaning the drab brown uniforms and she ran her fingers over the carefully pressed pleats and pockets on one of Emma's shirts as she hung it in the closet.

"There's an ice rink set up at the park," Snow spoke up after shutting the door. "David and I are going to take your brother skating if you'd like to come?"

Emma blinked and shook her head. "I'm not big on skating."

"If you don't know how-"

"I spent the better part of my shitty childhood in Minnesota," Emma cut her off. "I know how. It's just not my thing. Have fun, though."

Snow let out a sigh, aware that Emma read what it was a prelude to - and Emma was never enthused about such intrusions, but Snow had no idea how else to talk to her daughter.

"Emma, we just want to spend time with you," she explained. "To get to know you."

"Like you did my sister?" Emma retorted bitingly. "Who you obviously like more than me considering how happy you were with all the changes she made to my life."

Snow held back another sigh, taking a seat on the side of the bed. "I know you're angry at us, Emma. I know you think our being supportive of your sister's choices means somehow that we're not proud of you or wouldn't have supported the different choices you would have made, but that's not true. We just wanted to support our daughter in the things that made her happy."

"Right," Emma scoffed. "Nothing says being a supportive parent like dressing up a thirty year old woman with a twelve year old son like a sixteen year old virigin for a date she chose to make with a man who'd recently tried to murder you both before spending weeks perving on her with his spyglass because he'd decided during a year of oh-so-saintly-celebacy that she was his one true love and he was going to make her see that. Or turning her into a Grace Kelly cosplay when he succeeded, demurely trotting her way down a tacky-ass astroturf aisle to make her be-all-end-all 'love for all fucking eternity' about that lying asshole who spouted about giving up the past and revenge for love of a woman an hour after poisoning his centuries sworn enemy and jizzing himself as he gloated how he was going to spend his wedding night murdering his soon-to-be-step-son's grandfather ass to finally get his revenge. That's fucked up even by Jerry Springer family dysfunction standards."

"I know that we messed up, Emma," Snow conceded with a frown at that uncomfortable truth and yet another person she had to re-win over who seemed quite disinclined to give her any benefit of the doubt. Post-brain-surgery Belle was not nearly as forgiving or friendly... and perhaps much better suited to Rumplestiltskin than she'd otherwise thought.

"All I can say," Snow continued, "is that we're always going to feel guilty for the hard life you've had and sometimes we've let that guilt influence the choices we make, especially since your brother was born. We didn't get to see you fall in love as a teenager. And we didn't get to share with finding your happy beginning.

"Instead..." she sighed, "it seems that we've been part of the reason your life has been a series of tragic endings, even more now, which is the awful irony of it."

"That's one way to put it," snorted Emma.

Snow let out a breath. "We know what we did was wrong, Emma."

"Do you?" Emma challenged. "Do you understand how a man demanding a kiss for saving her father or kissing her when she has no memory of him or telling her that she' s his happy ending or picking out a house for them to live in together on the arrogant assumption she even wants to and is just afraid of being vulnerable and getting hurt is being a misogynist stalker asshole, not letting her set the pace and never pressuring her? Because it doesn't seem like. And maybe someday I will be that far gone from good sense, but that's not today."

Snow grimaced before replying, "I know it's... problematic, Emma. We supported Killian's pursuit because... well... after Neal died, and not wanting you to feel like we were replacing you with your brother, we tried to make up for all of the things we didn't share and the things you missed out on in ways that seemed to make sense at the time. And at that time it seemed like you needed a distraction, one that could maybe turn into something deeper if his feelings really were a catalyst for change. Obviously, those choices just hurt you more, and in hindsight our motives were clouded by guilt rather than doing what was right, what a parent should," she sighed. "And we're so sorry, Emma. The influence of evil magic and time travel or not, we should have fought harder to be the kind of people and parents we wanted to be, who would be supportive of the best person our daughter could be."

After a pause, she concluded, "But please believe that however terrible we feel about your childhood and however much we wish things could be different, we never wanted the daughter who saved us, who is kind, smart, compassionate, and so strong and resilient because of that pain, to be anyone else, to feel like she had to give up any part of herself to find happiness. We're so very proud of you, Emma."

Emma looked back at her, expression sad, and asked, "If you really loved me, if you were proud of me then, no matter how guilty you felt, no matter how 'tainted' magic was, why would you support _changing_ your daughter into someone who isn't any of those things? Did you think I was tainted by having a kid out of wedlock and only a murdering rapist pirate would want a princess who'd lost her virtue so you put on some big sham of a wedding, a big pretend with the virgule dress and the ridiculous vows?"

"Of course not!" Snow gasped.

Scoffing, Emma ignored her denial and snarked, "Well, joke's on you. The daughter you married off actually would have been a virginal bride if you hadn't all but pulled Hook's pants down and set her on his dick yourself so you could forget that you told your grandson's father not to let the castle door hit his ass on the way out of your family and ended up dead. So great parenting."

Snow winced at the vulgarity, and the accusation. "Emma, I know there's nothing I can say that make Neal's loss easier to bare, but-"

"You think it's just that?" Emma exclaimed with a despondent look. " _My entire world is gone_."

Her despair turning again to anger, she challenged, "Do you have any idea what it's like to have a life that no one else remembers? That no one here was even part of? To see people who look like your family and friends, but they're all just _different?_ Different enough that they didn't fight for you! Instead they _cheered_ as the person they thought was you turned into someone _they're proud of_ while _you're ashamed to have people think that was you_! My world and my family is gone! And the only person tied to my life that came before all of this _crap_ , that I could talk to about it, is gone too because 'dead is dead' apparently applies to only people _I_ love!"

"We're not gone," Snow tried again "Neal... I'm sorry he's gone, Emma. I'm sorry we weren't part of your life before, that the song in your heart got buried under all the... cruelty of this world. But we _are_ your parents. Maybe a bit different than you remember, but I loved you, the idea of you, before I even met your father. I'm sorry that I don't share all of the same memories, Emma. But our love for you, no spell can change that. You're our daughter. And maybe... you're meant to be our connection to the world that was before, to the stories that are no longer written down, that no one else remembers. Those stories, Emma, they made you, and they'll live on in you. That world might not exist the way it did before, but it's still here _inside of you_."

"What good does that do?" Emma shrugged. "What does it matter if what I knew was just a story in a book that doesn't exist anymore? It's the same as a love that was never written down, that no one else saw. If no one else remembers, cares that it's gone, then it's not even a story that matters. That's where the power is here, in the stories of true love that everyone knows, that unites them even if they're bullshit. But I don't even have that. I should have been the one cast into The Land of Untold Stories. I didn't get my story. It was stolen away and crapped by the universe over and over until I don't even have that _universe_ anymore to mad at!"

"Emma, we do remember, if only a little bit. We didn't see the beginning of that story," Snow told her, "but we saw that love was still there. We saw that it had been something special and there was the potential to be something special again. And it _was_ special, Emma. It still is. You carry that love in your heart. You carry those memories in more than just a box of things and they'll always be present in your life, wherever it takes you. You don't need a story for it to matter. You saw how powerful that love was. We all did. It saved us.

"Neal may not be here to share this life with you," she continued, "and the people here might be different, your father and I might not be the same people you remember, but they will live on in the song in your heart. That's something no one can take that away, nothing can destroy it."

"You really think that makes me feel better?" Emma snapped at her. "I can't even be properly angry at anyone because of that fucking time spell! Everything changed, everyone changed, and even if I killed Zelena it wouldn't change it back. And I'm the only one that remembers, I'm the only one who knows what could have - _should have_ been."

She grabbed the picture she'd been using as a bookmark, a Polaroid of her and Neal when they were young, now half rodent-chewed. "This was my happy beginning. And this is what's left it. All I have _left_ is past scars. Everyone else gets to move on in this world, but I can't. Because those scars are all I have left of mine. Those scars _are who I am_. And _so_ are my walls," she amended.

"You all looked at my sister walking down that aisle in her Victorian-era dress and cooed 'she's finally being vulnerable and her true self!" Emma scathed. "Finally a moment that is genuinely, truly, authentically Emma without barriers and walls!' But you know what? _I have walls and I keep them up for a reason_. Bad shit happened to me as a kid. _Actually happened_. Maybe for Anna it's like some bad movie she can forget, but it was my actual life and when you've had a fucked-up life, you don't need your walls _broken_ down. My pain didn't build the fucking Berlin Wall and some man wasn't going to come along and break it down so I could be free to be vulnerable and a real woman and my true self and all the rest of that misogynist bullshit. When you have walls like that, you needed to be able to trust people enough _to let them past_ , not stand by while they swing a wrecking ball over and over because they're convinced without even asking your opinion that you're their one true love until you're defenseless and just give in.

"You can believe what you want about my sister," Emma told her, "but whatever walls Hook broke down were just... just a movie set with nothing behind them. And mine... true love isn't going to tear them down and fix me into liking picket fences and tiaras and finding a new true love. You can continue on with your medieval traditions that say true love is eternal until one half of it kicks it and then it was just a misreading of the situation leading you to find your actual soulmate - so you better find that actually destined person whose path to you is littered in the corpses of innocent people who died because you both were foolish enough to true love them before discovering you were actually supposed to be laying on your back so the guy who murdered your grandfather and poke you with his sword," she scoffed.

"And how about," Emma continued, "your repeatedly suggesting Hook adopt Henry when he isn't even legally mine! I'm sure the next step was to get him to change his last name to 'Jones' so you could cancel Neal's memory out entirely - and then tell my brother he was just named after a 'good friend'."

"Emma... we were never trying to erase Neal's importance in your life - or Henry's. We just-"

"Didn't want a bastard for a grandson?" Emma challenged. "I know how it is back where you're from. That group living out in the forest, in Arthur's old camp, they make it pretty clear what the traditions back in The Enchanted Forest really are. You wanted to clean up all the messes in my life, erase the ones that were inconvenient going back to when you tried to sell me a magic beanfield solution to my baby daddy problems. Well, I'm sorry that I didn't graduate high school or learn needlepoint or save myself until my wedding day that I never got to have because you trusted a two-faced fairy who stuck me in a closet with a greedy shit of a puppet who blackmailed my true love into leaving and sent me to prison for reasons that still don't make any goddamn sense and then told him that your family motto didn't apply to peasant sons of the Dark One."

Grabbing her cigar box from the nightstand to put her Polaroid away, Emma continued, "I don't care if all the shit you did for my sister and her scumbag lover as Dark Ones is because you felt guilty for being selfish, elitist assholes. You still did it. And it still hurt me. And Henry. Dead might not be dead for you and Dad, but it is for us.

"And how do you think it feels to only find out the ways to save the one you lost when it's too late?" she challenged. "To have your parents be reminders of that and on top of it they name your brother after your dead true love without even asking, so I can't even get through one day here without being constantly reminded that I got fucked over by the universe and my family couldn't even be bothered to try to putting empathy before a shitty old tradition.

"But what I can't get passed," Emma continued, tears in her eyes, "is if you'd ever known me, if you'd maybe taken off your fucking true love rose colored glasses, you'd have been able to see all the goddamn _red flags_ that I wasn't me. If there's anything in you that's the parents I remember, how could you not see that? How could you be okay with any of the things my sister did? The person she turned 'Emma Swan' into? Princess Stepford Jones with her spectacle of a wedding buried under 40 pounds of tule and lace with a doily on her head and a bunch of complete strangers in attendance and her son playing best man for his own step grandfather who left his dad to rot on an island prison. That's not me.

"I don't beat up tortured, brainwashed orphans because I my plans to have a sex pancake breakfast got derailed," Emma argued. "I don't forgive people who murder and rape and lie and call them redeemed just because my son calls one of them 'mom' or they _stalked and harassed_ me into dating them. I call bullshit on anyone who says I can only be feminine and vulnerable and somehow Uniquely My Own Person _by dressing up not remotely uniquely like Grace Kelly or Sandra Dee_ to hang off a man's arm like a glorified cufflink. I _know_ I can be feminine in _whatever I goddamn want to be_ and the implication that my so-called 'journey' since getting to this town lead me to femininity embodied in a white wedding dress from the 50s isn't just insulting, it's gross and sad and demonstrates a level of implicit contempt for women that I _thought_ you'd gotten pulled out of your indoctrinated princess head during your bandit days, but apparently not.

"And let's not even forget that I sure as shit am not into any of that quasincest crap with both sides of my son's family routinely fucking each other while fucking each other over.

"So how am I supposed to feel at home in a family that calls that true love and the be-all-end-all of happiness and self-discovery?" Emma challenged as Snow sat back fighting her own tears. "No matter what you say about loving me for who I am and being proud of me for that, how am I supposed to trust you when what you did with my sister says the kind of person you want me to be goes against the most basic things I believe in and reinforces disgusting, outdated stereotypes even when you lived in this world and should know better that it's wrong and that I wouldn't ever buy into that misogynist bullshit?

"I was lost and not only didn't you notice," Emma continued angrily, "you hugged a dull, desperate, pathetic version of me who lived for nothing but a psychotic obsession with a man. All she talked about, all she cared about, was a man who abused her, constantly manipulated and lied to her, who tried to murder her and her family, but all she cared about was saving him from the fate he more than deserved for all of the shit he's not remotely sorry for beyond it standing in the way of his trophy wife that you served him up on a silver platter. Your daughter even put getting her clit flicked before her own son's well-being to the point she dragged him to Hell, dismissed his wanting to look for his father, left him unsupervised to get kidnapped by a serial killer, and then when she was on death row for this savior shit, Henry had to seek advice from a complete stranger on his mother dying because she was too busy having an anxiety attack over her rapist and murderer boyfriend being robbed of his perfect happy ending that he totally deserved because he twu wuved her."

Emma scoffed and shook her head. "Does it not even register with you and Dad how fucked-up that is? And how wrong on so many levels it is that you _gushed_ how proud you were of _that_ Emma - and to the _absurd_ extent that you put yourself and Dad in possibly irreversible comas, orphaning your other kid, so her sexual predator obsession could propose to her a little bit earlier than he would have if he'd been left to get back on his own? At least Regina had the sense to get Henry the hell out of that room and away from that disgusting shitfest before it went down to top off that stupid, selfish quest you made all about Belle and Gold being shit parents. No, sorry. You were the assholes there.

"Couldn't have your poor widdle pwincess waiting more than a few hours for her lover, right?" she continued viciously. "Sure, you wanted me to wait an eternity for my previous lover, couldn't be bothered to lift a finger at all to see us reunited, but it's not like Neal murdered Dad's father or anything and then lied and ran away like a coward and made it all about his pain. He just trusted a puppet not to take twenty grand and run off to have a sex vacation and then got shot and tortured trying to protect Henry and get back to us. But I can see how that's a way more unforgivable crime than the familicide one.

"I mean, after all," Emma continued, "that romance was all a mistake, right? So Henry's just left over baggage from some ill-informed romance during a forced but thankfully rectified detour into a world that doesn't get love and had to be assimilated into the happy beginning your daughter was destined for, at least he got old enough that feeling marginalized would get him to leave so you could focus on your double dates with your time travel epic romance couple and getting a litter of legitimate pirate grandbabies.

"Well, fuck that," Emma stated. "Henry's all I have left of a happy beginning that I never got to have, because no one believed it was real, including me. _You_ were supposed to help me believe so I could find my own story, the one that was right for me, so I could believe in true love and myself enough to save Neal, not try and sell me a bunch of magic beans to start over where and how you wanted or decide who got to 'always find' me when you thought I was ready to let my walls down. _That was your one job as my parents that you could still do, and you didn't even try_."

Snow lost her battle with tears and wiped at them with a washcloth from the laundry basket as they fell. "I'm sorry, Emma," she repeated, wondering how many times she'd said that now and if it was starting to sound as hollow to her daughter as it did to her own ears. "I'm sorry that I let you down. I'm sorry that you don't feel loved for the wonderful person you are because of the mistakes that your father and I made. And I know nothing will make up for what you've lost with your son and his father and whatever it is you shared with us in that other timeline that has been erased, but please don't let that bitterness keep you from still trying to find happiness in your life. Look what it did to Regina? You've suffered and you've lost and none of its fair. If you can't forgive us, I understand. But please try to find your own happy new beginning, for you, for Henry, even if it's not part of our story."

Unable to take more of the emotional onslaught, Snow stood up, taking the basket with her. She did pause just outside the door as she moved to close it behind her, glancing back at Emma one more time and reminded painfully of the little girl on the bed in the group home, reading her book while listening to her walkman. But instead of looking for hope in a story, this Emma looked like she was trying to pull the good memories it represented into herself to drive away the dark cloud that had been hanging over her since her return.

It was painfully clear that Emma still thought she was the Ugly Duckling in that book. And it was entirely their fault.

Making her way to the third floor, Snow found David pulling a scarf from the dresser and her expression gave away the outcome of her conversation.

"Emma's not coming."

Snow sighed and sat down heavily on the side of their bed, larger now than the too-short, slightly lumpy mattress with the out-dated white frame. The rose patterned sheets didn't fit this one and she hadn't been able to find them for a king.

"I don't think she's happy here, David. I'm not sure she can be. Maybe there was a time... but maybe there wasn't. Did we guilt her into staying? Would she have been happier if she'd never gotten her memories and come back from New York? We thought we were being heroes... but what if we're actually the villains in her story?" Snow wondered.

Taking a seat beside her, David could only grimace as he recalled, "You know, the other day, we had an argument after an altercation with Hook's mates down at the marina who were harassing one of Aesop's waitresses. The sort of... uncouth individuals they are, cut from the same cloth as Hook before he reformed. Emma said, 'Guys like that, they're everywhere. But it's guys like you that are the reason they get away with it.' And maybe she's right. Maybe I let an undeserving, despicable man get away with it, stalk and manipulate and guilt his way into my daughter's heart in plain sight... only to find out in the end it's maybe even worse than that because he didn't break down Emma's walls, he seduced _her sister_ who never had any walls in the first place because she's cursed into being emotionally impaired and isn't even cognizant of when flattery has some selfish agenda or what actually being in love and being loved is supposed to feel like beyond whatever she was able to glean from Emma, which doesn't seem to be enough. And maybe that situation just made her more confused and put her in a position that isn't actually the happy beginning we all hoped it would be."

"Neither of our little girls are who we thought they were," Snow agreed. "And neither of them are little anymore. Emma's forced to carry her tragic past with her. Anna's burdened by an inability to fully experience the present. The future isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows right now."

"No, that it is definitely not and we have to shoulder responsibly for our part in that," David grimaced, pulling Snow against his side.

"I used to want my kids to have extraordinary lives," she remarked, laying a head on his shoulder. "Now I just want some semblance of ordinary back. I don't care about castles or kingdoms, I just want things to feel normal. I'm so _tired_ of fighting, Charming."

"My mother used to say, 'There's no such thing as normal. Love is the only thing that makes the fight worth it'," David recalled. "She also used to say, 'Encourage the quest for happiness in your children, even if it takes them very far away from you'."

"Ruth was a smart woman."

"She was," David agreed. "I still miss her every day. I know she would be proud of Emma. And she would fight like hell to make sure Anna didn't turn out like my brother. And that's why we have to keep fighting, Snow. We lost some part of ourselves in this life. Or maybe didn't lose it, but lost sight of it. Whether it was magic itself being darkened or because we avoided some obstacle or hardship, whatever added up from how we met instead of how we were supposed to meet."

Shaking his head, he considered, "It's like when we were cursed, when were living those fake lives or when you drank that forgetting potion and turned mad with revenge or when I was under the thrall of those flowers that sucked away my courage. We ended up giving into more of our bad than fighting to be good. We were supposed to make each other better, keep each other from falling prey to our weaknesses, and instead we did what was easy, let our children down and our people down."

After a pause, David stated, "It would be easy to just give up. To say we are what we are now. That once you start changing it's not so easy to change back. So why try? But we know that's not right. Maybe we can't change back into the people we each were on that forest path that day we didn't meet but should have, who had different adventures that didn't include a glamouried daughter from the future and her one-handed lover. But we can still be better than we've been.

"Maybe... now... Emma herself is the hardship that we have to face to become the parents our children deserve and rulers our people have long been without."

"Do you think we can be?" Snow wondered, uncertain.

With a sigh David told her, "All we can do is try to do better for all of our children from here on out. One day at a time. Just... have patience."

"Patience," Snow repeated her husband's advice while hating it. For everything else in life, patience was usually _her_ line, but with family she just... patience was hard. But the best things in life were often the hardest to achieve. _Patience_.

* * *

The garden gnome was kicking the damaged Suburban's tires when Emma pulled up behind it. Henry had sent her a text about Christine's attack. She was not remotely surprised when the crazed car returned as she was getting groceries out of the back, creeping along and blasting the radio like a gang-banger cruising through a rival's territory.

At least it didn't spray oil on the Bug, but her neighbors peered uneasily out of their windows and Emma knew they were losing patience with her inability to tame the feral car... as was Michael Tillman who got no shortage of work from the accidents Christine caused, but also had to risk his life and tow-truck to haul the wrecks to his shop.

The Suburban had probably had it, rusted as it already was and rarely used, and it wouldn't be easy to get the mechanic to venture this deep into Christine's territory to tow it if the thing wouldn't start on its own. Perhaps she could sprinkle it with magic mushroom dust and shrink it down...

How her parents got by most of the time with just a pickup she had no idea, but she figured that they spent most of their savings on the farm. Another reason not to accept any charity regarding her own living situation.

The TV was on when Emma let herself in, turned to one of the college bowl game half time shows which her brother was watching, gnawing on what looked like a half-frozen Eggo dusted in cinnamon and wrapped in a wad of paper towels while Henry typed on his laptop.

"Did you get lunch?" Henry asked.

"No 'hello, Mom'. How was your day, Mom'?" Emma inquired.

"Hello, Mom. How was your day, Mom?" Henry asked cheekily.

"Unpleasant. I had to help do a urine test on your grandparents in Regina's musty, freezing sex vault. I accidentally ate a raisin cookie. And both Granny's and Dragon Express are closed. So it's grocery store prepackaged sandwiches for lunch. And spaghetti for dinner."

"Pisgetti!" Neal squealed.

"And then you're taking him home, right?" Henry groaned. "I can't take him waking me up for juice at three in the morning and jumping on my bed two hours later for Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes. Plus, I'm pretty sure he's teething again. Dad soaked it McClutcheon's," he gestured to the Eggo. "The cinnamon was my idea. It was the only way to get him to stop shrieking and gnawing on the furniture."

"Great. I'll call your grandparents later," Emma agreed. "I can only take one Neal in the morning, and that's the not-a-morning-person one who has all of his teeth and can make his own breakfast.

"Sorry, kiddo," she apologized to her brother. "You're cute, but you're someone else's problem between ten PM and eight AM."

Turning back to Henry, she asked, "Where is your dad?"

"Showering of dead guy stink."

"Well, at least he's not covering it with skanky pirate perfume," Emma retorted. "Put the groceries away and make sure your uncle gets more tuna salad in his mouth than on himself and the furniture."

Leaving a grumbling teen to feed a cranky toddler, Emma headed upstairs. A shower sounded wonderful and with the old water heater never lasting very long, she figured that she was justified in barging into the bathroom... and just for the heck of it flushing the toilet.

"Henry, what the h-" Neal shouted at the burst of hot water, pulling back the curtain and the rest of that sentence at discovering his prankster was not his teenage son and also wearing nothing but steamed up pair of glasses. "Jesus."

"Wrong savior," Emma joked, setting her specs on the sink. "I'll wash your back if you wash my front!"

Neal grinned widely at that old line and helped her into the slippery tub. "This almost makes up for nearly getting mowed down by the possessed car you failed to mention!"

" _Just almost_?"

* * *

Henry turned the volume up as the joists in the ceiling started squeaking. He was familiar with this from his aunt's house, though as bits of plaster fell from the water-stained ceiling, he mused darkly that he never had to worry about Anna and Hook bringing the ceiling down due to termite and leaky pipe damage.

"Parents are gross," he told his uncle as he typed on his computer. "But at least they're not also related to me in some _other_ way that would make it even nastier. You'd probably be better off falling in love with someone from this world just to steer clear of that kind of drama. That, and your prospects are kind of limited in the royalty department as far as brains and not being inbred and just weird magic problems goes.

"Alexandra was turned into a boy and de-aged by magic mushrooms for awhile," Henry recounted, "and then re-aged up to the age she's supposed to be, which you gotta figure has led to some cognitive and gender association development issues. Prince Philip and Princess Aurora's kid has Monkey Herpes, so _his_ kid might get really hairy and want to throw poop around under the full moon or something. Plus there's the risk of brain damage from the herpes. And I heard Princess Ariel and Prince Eric keep their daughter in a fish tank instead of a crib so-"

Neal suddenly started wailing and Henry looked over to find his uncle red-faced with part of a peanut sticking of his nose. Groaning, Henry pulled it out, but the kid kept crying, so Henry tipped the kid's head back to look, then moaned.

"How did you even get it up that far, Little Dude!?"

888

In the master bedroom, Emma and Neal had continued the other part of their old game until 'beat the housekeeping clock' transitioned into a more gentle exploration than they'd had time for back then, not to mention more recently in The Underworld. After Neal demonstrated some new skills of the oral variety that made Emma's toes curl, they just enjoyed laying together in a big comfortable bed without having to worry about being torn apart once again.

Well, laying in bed while Emma devoured her egg salad sandwich, half of Neal's ham and cheese, and a snack bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

"You realize you're getting crumbs and Dorito dust everywhere?" Neal pointed out.

"Sheets need to be changed anyway," she shrugged. "And all I had for breakfast was a stale donut and Regina's nasty raisin cookies. Sorry if eating in bed isn't sexy."

"Oh, it's not _un_ -sexy," Neal laughed as she munched on another Dorito. "But I'm just slightly concerned you were actually fantasizing about lunch earlier."

Emma swallowed while furrowing her brows. Neal pointed to her chest and she discovered that her nipples were straining quite obviously against the sheet that was catching her crumbs and chip dust. Hormones seemed to have decided she could no longer delay adding another complication to their relationship.

"Don't take it personally," she told Neal. "They've just had a mind of their own lately."

"Yeah?" Neal chuffed, amused. "I didn't think women had that problem with any parts of their anatomy."

"Guess you've never had sex and lunch in bed with any pregnant women then," Emma answered and waited the several beats along with her heart that it took Neal to process that.

"Wait... _what_? You're _pregnant_!?"

Emma nodded anxiously and explained, "I couldn't find the time to tell you yesterday. Well, I could, but I was nervous. I only found out for sure that morning. I took a home test a week ago, but considering what happened to my sister, I was kinda worried it might be a like an Incubus spawn or some kind of magical parasite considering the conception had to have happened in The Underworld, and that actually seemed more plausible than getting knocked up by the magically created physical illusion of my dead lover's body. You just never know around here. Anyway, definitely a real for sure baby and Whale did a sort of paternity test using Henry's dumb teen drug testing sample that was still in the lab from last week so no _Alien_ stuff or crazy accelerated growth stuff is going to happen. Worse case senario, the kid gets your nose. So baring anyone slipping me a growth potion, it should be the good old fashioned roughly seven months of aches, pains, and stretch-"

Neal silenced her with a kiss that was both deep and sweet.

"-marks," Emma finished, smiling a little. "I take it you're happy."

"Shocked and happy," Neal told her.

"I did mention the stretchmarks, right?"

"Yeah. You also insulted by nose, but that's valid," Neal replied, placing a hand on Emma's not-quite-flat stomach and looking into her anxious hazel eyes. "I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure I'm here to see this kid born and grow up... and possibly get a nose job, Emma. I promise."

Relieved, Emma threw her arms around Neal, tucking her head under his chin as she sniffled a little, hating her hormones.

Neal returned the embrace and pressed his lips against her hairline. "I'm sorry you thought you'd have to go through this alone again, Em. Last thing I ever wanted was to make your life harder."

Pulling back, Emma insisted, "That part did suck, but not the going through it again. This time around I knew you loved me and you would have been here if you'd had the choice. I lost you again, but I got a sort of parting gift, another piece of you and me, and we already made one great kid," she concluded with a smile.

"Yeah, we did," Neal agreed before kissing her again and telling her, "I love you so much. _Both_ of you."

"I love you so much too," Emma returned, placing her hand over his against her stomach. "And this kid, even though when it really sinks in that there's actually a person in there I'm probably gonna freak out again. Childbirth really _really_ sucks."

"There's no way around that one, huh?" Neal agreed. "Well, c-sections, I guess. Unless there's some magical version of that."

"Yeah, but with the constant crisis around here, probably can't afford to be cut open and on bed rest for a week, and the price would probably suck. Not to mention Whale might pull out a kidney or something in the process," Emma pointed out and then shrugged. "Besides, Henry already ruined my vagina."

"Naw, you have a great vagina! I love your vagina!" Neal declared. "Pretty sure I showed my love for it earlier."

Emma grinned. "It really appreciated your appreciation. I should probably, you know, reimburse you for it," she replied and began to work her magic. Not literally, of course!

In no time Neal was gripping the sheets, his breath panting. He could feel the pressure building again, lights starting to flash behind his tightly shut eyelids.

Then suddenly-

"MOM! UNCLE NEAL STUCK A PEANUT UP HIS NOSE AND HE WON'T STOP CRYING!"

The warmth disappeared and Emma shouted back, "IN A MINUTE!"

"IT'S LIKE WAY UP THERE! HE COULD BE BRAIN DAMAGED! I ALREADY PULLED THREE OUT BUT THEN HE BIT ME! I THINK I NEED A TETANUS SHOT!"

Neal groaned and Emma gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. You'll have to... er... again. Sorry. I'd better go take care of this."

"Yeah. Never a dull moment in this family," chuffed Neal, left to finish off in the usual fashion... and clean up a now very messy flim of Dorito dust on his penis. Well, it wasn't the first time that had happened...

888

"You were supposed to be watching him," Emma groaned, examining the bite mark on her son's hand after she'd used magic to remove two more peanuts from her brother's nose.

"I can't watch him and spell-check my report. And I'm not the one who was eating peanuts yesterday and dropped them in the couch cushions," Henry pointed out. "I told you, he's a little demon!"

"Yeah, yeah," she grumbled and put some hydrogen peroxide intentation. "It didn't break the skin. You'll be fine. Now how about I read that book report?"

"Fine," Henry groaned, handing his computer over.

Two minutes into Emma's reading it, her brother started shrieking again. Both of his nostrils were crammed with something colorful.

Sighing, Emma poofed out _six_ M &Ms after which her brother grinned at her and clapped his hands.

"You did that on purpose!" Emma realized and Henry laughed.

"You know he's just gonna keep doing that now and annoying the crap outta Grandma and Gramps thinking they can poof the stuff out."

Emma shrugged. "Well, they can take him to Dr. Whale then and he'll stop thinking it's fun. And you are not telling them I accidentally encouraged my brother sticking stuff up his nose for magic tricks!"

"Only if I get the rest of the M&M's you're obviously hoarding somewhere."

"You've got too much of your Dad's dad in you," Emma grumbled and retrieved from one of her rubber boots in the mud room a half empty party-size Halloween candy bag of M&Ms. "Fine. It's a _deal_."

"Why are you keeping them in your boots?"

"Because you would never look for them there, obviously. You have Neal's sweet tooth. You're dad's. Not your uncle's. If only he'd eat the stuff instead of sticking it up his nose! We're really going to have to figure out nicknames or something..."

"We should probably really baby proof this place," considered Henry. "Besides the evil magic booby-traps, the kid could have Grandma's penchant for smacking her head on things and I don't want to get blamed if he cracks his head on some corner while sticking Skittles up his nose."

"That's an awful thing to say. I hate Skittles. I would never have them in this house," Emma deadpanned... just before music started blaring in the driveway.

Rolling his eyes, Henry stated, "The psycho car is home. Let the good times begin!"

Emma stood up and ruffled his hair to his annoyance, "You know you like staying here, and not just for your aunt's bribery entertainment system. But as soon as the floors are refinished and the washing machine fixed, you're going to have to pick up your dirty socks and do your laundry."

"Crissy bash!" the toddler on the couch interrupted.

Of course, through the picture window, the car began ramming the garage door which had failed to open for it. Once it made it inside, the rotted, rain-damaged roof collapsed on it and it beeped mournfully.

"I kind of feel sorry for it," Henry admitted as the horn continued to beep. "It's like a dog whose master died and it doesn't understand where he went and why strange people are living here now."

"Well, maybe you and your dad can get his dad to figure out what the deal is with Christine," Emma shrugged as she headed back toward the stairs.

Henry scowled at her. "Yeah, well, maybe you can _not_ collapse the ceiling on me and your brother having sex."

"That argument would hold a lot more weight, Kid," Emma reminded, "if you weren't grounded for getting caught with your girlfriend with your pants down. Besides, you can always go to your room if you value your life more than your flatscreen."

888

When Emma returned to the farm after a few more rounds of sex and dinner, her parents were looking improved, but still a bit pekish. Neal immediately struggled out of her arms and hurried over to his parents demanding cookies.

"Why is he all orange?" Snow asked.

"He got into a bag of Doritos," Emma answered. "Just be grateful I kept him from bathing in spaghetti... and that I didn't get Sriracha Cheetos instead of peanuts or he'd have a seriously uncomfortable nose right now... though it would distract him from his molars which are coming in. So have fun with that."

"You're just trying to exasperate your sister, aren't you?" David sighed, scooping him up.

"NO!" Neal emphatically replied.

"He's doing that a lot lately," sighed Snow. "He was due for a bath, anyway."

"Nooooooooooooo!" Neal wailed. "No baaaaaaaafffffffff!"

David winced while carrying his son toward the stairs and Snow lamented, "He's in the bath-hating stage also. It's too bad it's not summer or we could just take him outside and hose him off."

Setting two mugs of hot cocoa on the table, Snow told her daughter, "I'm so sorry about last night. Really. And then foisting your brother on you like that. I hope he wasn't too much trouble beyond the usual nasal-related issue."

"Well, the crazy car I adopted beat up your car that I borrowed, so we'll call it even," Emma replied.

"I was looking to get something newer and safer anyway," Snow shrugged. "And without 'tramp' painted on the side. What matters is that you're all okay. I wish you would find a way to... un-enchant that car, though. It's becoming a real menace."

"I know. I'm probably going to get a lot of complaints at the town hall," Emma groaned. "What kind of magic-using sheriff am I if I can't deal with my own cursed car and crazy garden gnome that keeps attacking the neighborhood dogs and cats?"

"It almost seems like the previous owner didn't want anyone knew moving in," Snow quipped and after a sip of her cocoa asked, "So... did you get the results on the potion?"

"Something with bad manticore venom that causes hallucinations and probably wasn't made by a potions master so we're not looking at a new arch-villain here," shrugged Emma. "So either George is after you on the cheap or it's some other less connected constituent who's not a fan. Maybe someone also with a grudge against Whale. We never did find out anything about that alchemist's identity. Hard to pin down the Land of Untold Stories people. So it's likely some of those traditionalist types who were supplying his potions ingredients looking to kill two birds with one stone: embarrass the town's most beloved royals who support assimilation with this world and vandalize the guy who wants their kids to get vaccinated and their woman to not give birth next to the pig sty. I'll look into the town's known potions makers tomorrow just in case it's not a Little Camelot thing or some of the people living in town who sympathize enough to help. Regina's getting me a list."

Snow let out a sigh. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised. Negotiations haven't been going well and it's hard to hold it against them. None of them asked to be brought here and then we failed to ensure they could find homes, work, and good lives in Storybrooke. Arthur gave them a taste of home and even if he was a fraud, he was the fraud that looked out for them," she concluded with a grimace.

"But enough about our political problems. I'm sorry that you spent this extra special New Years Day babysitting us and your brother instead of finally having that cup of coffee with Neal."

Emma wrinkled her nose. "No, ewe, don't go there. You know my sister uses 'coffee' as a euphemism for sex."

"Your sister uses most anything as a euphemism for sex," Snow reminded. "Coffee, bubble baths, pancakes, waffles, night patrol, onion rings, washing the kitchen floor..."

"My sister is such a skank."

"Your sister is... liberated in her sexuality," Snow tried to be more conciliatory.

"Yeah, well, I'm not going to be liberated all over my kitchen floor."

"Probably for the best. You'd get splinters."

Emma scowled at the joke. "I'll get the floors refinished when I can afford it. I know the place needs work-"

"It was a _crack house_ , Emma."

"Yeah, okay, it was a crack house," Emma groaned, "but at least the old geezer kicked out the crack heads and threw away all the crack... or maybe he did all the crack. But either way, it's my house. And I know it's not a massive mansion like Regina's house or some historical monstrosity like Anna's and Gold's. But at least it's not a creepy cult farm with a torture storm cellar. I just have to deal with some feral magical pets of the previous owner and maybe put in a new water heater... and fix the garage - the roof kind of collapsed on my evil car earlier - and some of the eaves, but there's a feeling of accomplishment in that, you know. I thought Dad would at least get that from how he grew up."

"And because of how he grew up, and knowing how you grew up, he doesn't want you to have to scrape together pennies to afford a 'fixer up'," Snow stated. "Neither of us do."

"It's not something I have to do, it's something I _want_ to do," Emma argued. "Anna may like having a house served up on a silver platter, but after all the times I didn't believe in myself, that I could make something of myself or put something good into the world... other than my kid that I gave up so he'd have a chance to make something of himself, I want something... tangible that I can make better, and make the way I want it. And maybe I'll screw it up, but maybe I won't. But it'll be something I earned either way by what I put into it."

Snow let out a small sigh and inclined her head. "All right. I can understand that, Emma. But as your mother it's my job to want the best for you. And that doesn't involve a homicidal car and collapsing roofs."

"Yeah, well, that's not in my dream house fantasy either," Emma conceded. "I'm working on it. Just... park a block over next time you visit."

"I suppose that will get me plenty of time to text you to make sure I'm not going to walk in on you breakfa-sexing."

"As long as it's not to barge in with wedding venue ideas," Emma warned. "I just want to settle for my life not sucking right now, and weddings in this town are like magnets for the opposite of that. Plus, I'm not into the frightened virginal gothic bride Hollywood tragedy cosplay meets cheesy 1980s soap opera wedding ceremony. Or musicals. I don't have a dream wedding, but that's definitely my nightmare one. I'd rather wear a red leather dress and get married by an Elvis impersonator in a truck stop bathroom than any of my sister's ceremonies. Also, I wouldn't jinx the bouquet. I should have burned that thing along with Anna's dress..."

Snow winced. "I am sorry about that. If I'm being perfectly honest, I only suggested Anna use Snowdrops for her first ceremony because I was trying to make a good memory for myself, to try to get over the connection to my mother's death and funeral."

"And did it work?" Emma asked, curious.

"No, not really," Snow admitted. "And considering it wasn't even your wedding, it turned into just one more poor, selfish choice, I suppose. That wasn't fair to you or your sister. Anna would have preferred Middlemists."

"Well, better than my sister ruining dandelions for me, I guess," shrugged Emma. "My front yard'll probably be nothing but weeds in a couple of months and I'd rather it didn't remind me of Anna's skankiness. At least I never liked pink, so she can have her creepy Middlemist betrayal flowers and evil-attracted whatever posies that open unnatural portals in the space-time continuum. And this never meant anything in particular when I got it," she shrugged with a gesture to her tattoo, "so it doesn't matter that magic decided to brand her a copy because it's our family crest or maybe she was the one daring me to get it or whatever."

"You never told me about that," Snow remarked and Emma's brows furrowed.

"Yeah, I'm sure I did," Emma argued. "That night after your date with Whale. He sent you flowers. I was pissed at finding out Graham was banging Regina. I came back from night patrol and you'd put them back in the vase. I wanted a drink. You made a bad joke about one night stands. You told me how you were generally against throwing them away, accept for Snowdrops, which you _thought_ you hated because the nuns collected them from the cemetery for the vases at the hospital and that just made them seem sad somehow, like some specter of death, so you'd throw them out and replace them with flowers you bought yourself. And then you asked about my tattoo. I said I didn't even like flowers in general that much and I wasn't even sure what it was, just that I'd saved up enough money to get something of my own and a tattoo was something that couldn't get left behind or taken and broken by some other kid in the group home and it was cheap and simple."

After a pause, looking for any sign of recognition in her mother's expression, Emma continued, "You said it looked like your favorite flower: an apple blossom, which is supposed to symbolize love, peace, sensuality, and fertility. You blushed like a virgin on the last two despite just having had a one night stand," she snorted a little. "I said I liked dandelions, which I know is weird and silly because they're weeds and they basically wilt like five minutes after picking them, but I've always liked that they grow practically anywhere. They're tough. Even when the leaves get all dried out and burned in the sun they still bloom. And no matter how hard you try to get rid of them, they just keep coming back. I was sure you'd laugh, but you gave me this whole... botanical history crap about them."

Pursing her lips, Snow related, "I don't think it's silly to like dandelions. They are remarkable little plants. Every part of the dandelion is useful. Food, medicine and dye for coloring. Root of dandelion can be used to make something like coffee and to treat infections. It's also the only flower that represents the three celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars. The yellow flower resembles the sun, the puff ball resembles the moon and the dispersing seeds resemble the stars."

Emma gave her bright yet dubious look. "Yeah."

"I..." Snow shook her head. "I don't remember that conversation, Emma. You came home and told me about Graham and Regina. I was grading papers. I remember you getting a drink and saying something about my trash flowers and _wondering_ about your flower tattoo, but I didn't ask."

"Of course," Emma exhaled. "Because my sister went back in time and changed things and because of her fucking curse being part of that, magic made you into the parents she wanted, changed everything that would have taken away the 'happy beginning' she wanted, including a stupid conversation about flowers."

Snow reached out to lay a hand on Emma's arm. "Whatever we talked about then, conversations we had that... that didn't happen when Anna changed things, we can have those conversations now, sweetheart."

"It won't change things," Emma told her bluntly. "Whether they happened or not, whether you knew my favorite flower or that I like french fries with my grilled cheese, that doesn't change what happened. And neither does Neal being back. It doesn't undo all the selfish choices people made or the aftermath."

"I know that," Snow conceded, though with a hint of disappointment at having hoped otherwise.

"And it doesn't mean I'm going to turn into a good little 1950s housewife, chaining myself to a stove, wearing flower prints and dresses to advertise that my walls are down and I'm in love and that I'm a real woman," she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"No one is expecting you to be someone you're not."

"You were pleased when you thought I turned out to be someone other than you first thought I was, though," Emma pointed out, "who made her be-all-end-all about romance and liked playing Stepford Wife. Don't pretend that's not your ideal - or what you were raised to think should be your ideal and made you happier than having an unmarried daughter with a bastard son fathered by the dead son of Rumplestilskin in a dirty motel room when she was seventeen. You could pretend all of that was just an unfortunate mess that happened because of a curse and your little princess' real happy beginning was dancing on a giant chess board arm-and-hook with the guy who murdered your actual-not-a-drunk-dick father-in-law.

"Which was no big deal," Emma continued, "because you're totally cool now if villains don't actually care about redeeming themselves, having to face the awfulness of what they've done or put any actual effort into changing or face any real consequences. If they just want the good guys to realize that they've been right all along that they were never so bad all along, you'll just hug it all out, with maybe a token nod to them feeling whatever you think qualifies as regret, but no reason to hold them accountable."

"Our family is complicated, Emma," Snow reminded. "We can't just throw half of them in prison."

"But it wasn't even about them being family," Emma aruged. "It was because true love will wash that slate clean. Sure, it won't bring back all the people they murdered or unrape the people they assaulted, but if they feel bad about it because it might make the heroes think less of them or get in the way of tapping some ass, then that's time served and out on good behavior. So they deserve unconditional forgiveness and support, to have the slate magically wiped clean as if all the bad things they did never happened. Even though they don't deserve that and it doesn't erase anything. Because real redemption is long and messy and hard and it's not about letting the villains off scott free-it's exactly the opposite."

Shaking her head, Emma remarked, "But you were too busy letting Hook ride off with a horse-load of supplies after openly admitting he only ever helped you to get in my pants and then jumped up to praise him and loosen my chastity belt yourself when he took credit for getting me my memories back because no one had bothered to ask him where he got that potion, so why not take credit if you turned you into his fangirls? Lies of omission, this family is real good at those. That and hypocrisy. There are no heroes and villains if no one's ever held accountable for anything. Just assholes.

"Maybe I was an idiot thinking my family would be different than most in any universe," Emma considered. "Or maybe they were different, maybe they did know the difference between justice and charity and just being selfish jerks, but that all got undone... and here we are."

Snow let out a sigh. "Maybe I do have expectations born out of a world that has no meaning for you, that maybe shouldn't because it is arcane by the standards you were raised with, and maybe I should be able to give them up because I was given memories of living a life here. But that's not as easy as you might think, not when that life wasn't real, when the choices weren't entirely mine. And I do understand that means I value different things, Emma, and that because I do I was, perhaps, overeager to accept it when I thought you were coming around to my way of things - even when that didn't fit with the woman I'd come to know. It was... a common ground we could find between two very different worlds and lives."

"And now that's gone," snorted Emma.

"Which doesn't mean it's the only thing we both value, Emma," Snow insisted. "There's true love and family and helping people in need. Maybe your father and I both put the former two before the later more than we should have, especially with respect to your sister... and failed on all accounts with Neal. But they are important to us. We may not understand your story, full of... themes and adventures that are foreign to our world, but we understand that it helped shape you and that it was - _is_ \- true. And we're sorry we ever doubted that, doubted you, or let our uncertainly and guilt so heavily influence the decisions we made with Anna that resulted in hurting you... and the people of this town.

"You shouldn't have to clean up the messes we made," Snow lamented, "whether it's the Sheriff's Department or tracking down people who feel wronged by your father and I for ignoring their suffering. I know your sister's... track record has made it harder for people to trust you, and perhaps we're not helping with that. Just... don't give up hope that you'll find your place here like you did once before. I'm sure with time everyone will see that you are still the Sheriff they elected, who'll fight for them, for victims instead of villains. Just be patient. And, you know, saving a few more kittens up trees and getting your picture in the paper for it never hurts either."

Emma smiled a little. "Yeah, well, don't go chasing any cats up trees just to get me good PR."

"I can't make any promises," Snow retorted. "Parents do foolish things for their children when they think it's for their happiness. I know I've done some very foolish things that might always be there between us, Emma. We might never have the relationship that either of us hoped for when we found each other again because of those things. I've accepted that. But that doesn't mean I won't still be here for you. That I'm not on the side of your happiness, whatever that might be."

Emma looked away, not sure how to respond. After a few moments she answered, "You are my parents. I'm not... it's not that I want to turn my back on our family or not be part of it. I do want to be part of it. I think I'd even like to try to have some kind of relationship with my sister if she's willing to try to fight her curse and become a better person. But I need to be able to trust you both again before I have an idea of what that means. And I'm not there yet."

Snow nodded. "Then it looks like we both have to be patient and just do our best to show our good intentions."

"I suppose so," sighed Emma, adding, "I'm sorry that I'm not making this easy."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Snow insisted. "I told you, sweetheart, it's your father and I that have made this hard. All of the obstacles in our path, we put them there. And for myself, Emma, like I said, I'm really not looking for instant forgiveness and joining a mother-daughter bridge club, so don't feel like I'm sitting at home moping because we're not getting facials together - or playing pool with Vikings together."

"You have to be a little disappointed," Emma insisted and her mother shrugged.

"Was I relieved that your sister forgave things so quickly?" she admitted, "Of course. But it absolutely seemed too good too be true. We hid certain things for so long because we didn't think our daughter would possibly be so easily forgiving. So, of course, it _was_ too good to be true. Your sister can't process emotions in a normal way, so even if she believed that she was you, she didn't have that... emotional investment. Or maybe it's actually that she understood and approved of such underhanded actions because it's what she's predisposed to. Either way, her temper burns hot and fast and gets over things quickly that ordinary people need time to heal from."

"And by 'hot and fast'," Emma mused, "you mean completely flipping out over things that ordinary people would deal with more rationally, like not trying to shoot a woman in the head execution style for getting conned by a crazy wizard or threatening to murder a man in front of his parents because a crazy fairy literally forced him to send her lover away... the exact thing her lover was actually intending to do anyway before you went and gave him a bullshit pep-talk that boils down to you wanting a fancy wedding and more grandbabies."

Snow winced a little. "I might have used some hyperbole in convincing Killian not to run, but I think everyone knows by now that stroking his ego is the best way to manipulate that pirate."

"Stroking his _ego_ is probably the second best way," snorted Emma. "He's got my idiot sister for the other. And letting him leave would have been best for everyone."

"You don't know that and she's not an idiot. She's just severely emotionally stunted," Snow corrected, "and often failed to interpret the emotions she got from you accurately - or failed to deal with them in a normal way. You know that isn't her fault, Emma. It's a hereditary curse. And you have suffered a lot, yes, but try to imagine how hard it must be for Anna to suddenly find out she's not who she thought she was, and worse than that, she's not even a child that naturally would have come to be. If it wasn't for that blood curse, you'd be an only child. She was created from you, what all of those texts Belle found call 'an inferior copy'. But she's still a person with a soul that doesn't deserve to be seen as inferior or as anything other than the unique person she is, no matter what she looks like. And it surely doesn't help that we _didn't_ see her as that. That even she didn't know she was her own person.

"I know that's why she went away," Snow stated. "To find her own person, her own story."

"The same way Henry would have if nothing had changed," Emma sighed. "If the gods hadn't interfered. It's hard to stay in a place where it feels like you're being replaced, no matter how much it's become your home and the people there your family."

Snow reached out and gave her hand a brief squeeze. "Whatever might have come to pass, that's not a possibility anymore. You shouldn't feel guilty for something that hasn't happened, that won't happen, and that wouldn't even have been your fault if it had. Here, now, you have a son who fought to reunite his family so we could all be together, and you're part of that family and I know that Henry will never doubt how much he's loved and is part of _your_ story, Emma, so when he does grow up and go out into whatever world awaits-"

"There will be far less cousin-fucking?"

"I wasn't going to put it that way, but... yes... hopefully. And he won't stay away until a curse forces him home. There will be pleanty of birthdays and holidays, phonecalls and texts and magic mirror calls and magic bottle messages. No one is going to lose touch in this family, not with both of you here to hold it together."

"Unless a kraken eats Anna and Killykins," Emma quipped.

"Don't say that!" Snow huffed.

A shrieking giggle turned their attention away from their cocoa and toward a toddler running full tilt through the livingroom, stark naked accept for the towel held around his neck that flapped like a cape behind him.

"I should probably do something about that," groaned Snow, hurrying away from the table.

Emma snorted to herself at the sound of shoes pounding against hardwood down the hall with her mother's shouts at her brother to "stop this instant, young man!" She really did have that school teacher voice down. Emma couldn't quite mimic it with her brother - or with her son. Maybe it took 28 years of practice under a curse. Or maybe it was something you were born with.

Her free hand dropped to her stomach where new life was growing even if it wasn't obvious yet. She couldn't quite picture herself chasing after her own naked bath-hating toddler even if she still had hazy "memories" altered from Regina's raising Henry. That was never a role she had imagined for herself. Accepting and figuring out how to raise an adolescent had been out of her comfort zone enough. Although, she supposed, all of it was out of Regina's comfort zone and she'd managed to raise Henry with only a minimal amount of psychological trauma inflicted on the kid, so how hard could it be?

At the sound of heavier footsteps, Emma dropped her hand quickly to her knee before her father dragged himself in and collapsed into her mother's vacated chair.

"You're looking the age you're supposed to be," Emma snarked, earning a smirk from her father.

"Funny. I think I did find a gray hair, though."

"You were pretty terrified of those imaginary carrots..."

"If you had to make your brother eat carrots, you'd be terrified of them too," David argued. "Thanks for watching him, by the way, even if you did turn him orange as a carrot."

"Well, Henry and Neal did most of the watching," Emma admitted. "Henry is being punished, after all. I do need to make it up to Neal, though."

"I'd rather not know in what manner you plan on doing that," David grimmaced.

"Hook and my sister have given you a seriously dirty mind!"

David snorted. "I suppose that's true. I wonder if there's a detox potion for that? Scratch that," he amended, rubbing his temples. "No more potions."

"Headache?" Emma asked.

"It's getting better. Mild boughts of vertigo still," he sighed. "Whale dropped by and 'evaluated' us. He said he'd have you arrest us if we tried to drive for the next twenty-four hours, so I think I'm stuck on foot patrol of the barnyard tomorrow. Sorry," he apologized. "I know this is shitty timing. You didn't even get today off with a teething toddler."

"It does kind of suck," Emma conceded. "But at least we have a portal ban in effect, so Neal's unlikely to be falling down any. As long as he avoids getting run down by my evil car, we'll have time to catch up after this poisoning mess is over with. I'm not going to flip out and throw a tantrum like a spoiled toddler at a toy store because I'm being denied five minutes of make-out time with my boyfriend. You know, like my sister."

"My headache appreciates your emotional maturity."

"I'm glad," Emma replied, standing up. "And I'm going home before the aforementioned crazy car frees itself from the damaged garage and take it out on any cars in the vacinity. Neal's going to try to start Mom's car and take it to Tillman's tomorrow morning. You could actually get it fixed enough for Mom to use it for work or replace it, you know, instead of driving her. I don't get the obsessive ride-sharing thing with you guys and my sister and Hook. I lived in my car with Neal. It's not romantic. It's fast food grease and farts."

David retorted, following her to the front door, "Well, we generally save our farts for after we get out of the car. But good to know you've already made it past the relationship development milestone of farting. Always a rather awkward one, particularly when you're sharing a hole in a tree with a princess and never a dwarf around when you need someone to blame..."

Emma snorted at that and replied, "Oh, we got that stuff out of the way well before there was any relationship. Just because you can steal a five bean burrito, doesn't mean you should. And then there was the tampon incident. Almost as embarrassing as having to diaper my parents."

"You had to go there," sighed David.

In the foyer Emma grabbed her coat from the rack and got serious. "I know I'm making things hard for you guys here," she told her father. "And maybe I've been too hard on you about the department stuff. I know most of what happened was on Hook or Anna's watch, but..."

"No, it's deserved. I screwed up," David insisted. "These lawsuits are as much on me as on either of them. Even if I wasn't with the department anymore, I left to take the alderman position, so that means I should have been more aware of how my constituents were being treated, actually looked into things, instead of just putting blind trust in family. I understand why some people are angry, both in town and in Arthur's old camp. And why they might take illegal measures to get some satisfaction. George may be the one who'd get the most out of seeing me 'dethroned', and I wouldn't discount Peep either which wouldn't be entirely undeserved on my part, so this was probably a long time coming and next to the sort of actions some of our other enemies have taken over the years, a little public humiliation is nothing we can't handle. If I get ousted on Friday, then it is what it is. I had good intentions, but I didn't do enough with them. So all we can do is try to keep someone with bad intentions off the City Council."

He shrugged and concluded, "But that's something for me and your mother and Regina to worry about."

"How would that work, though?" Emma asked. "I thought there had to be some hereditary claim for the seats from each kingdom. Unless Regina's trying to convince all the royals to change that in the charter, which I can't see happening."

"Oh, you know, George is always claiming that my brother had some bastards out there," sighed David. "It would be an iffy claim at best since I'm only serving as your mother's proxy by marriage as she technically came to rule George's kingdom by conquest and a treaty - that he, of course, says is fraudulent because the noble houses of both kingdoms were still under the illusion that I was Prince James and his son by blood. It's..."

"Complicated," Snow interjected, arriving with a pajama wearing toddler in her arms. She told Emma. "You handle the law, we'll handle the order. You may be the heir apparent to our vast kingdom of thirty acres and a cow and some chickens, but please don't worry yourself over our mess."

"In other words, I don't understand Enchanted Forest traditions and politics and punching people in the face is not considered useful diplomacy unless you're challenged to a duel," Emma retorted with a nod. "Got it. Just try not to pi... er... tick anyone else off before Friday. I still have a ton of paperwork, no deputy, no budget for a deputy, and a patrol car currently the size of my brother's Big Wheels... which is kind of cool, actually, but not very useful."

"We'll do our best," said Snow.

Emma gave her brother's nose a tweak. "Night, squirt. Be good for Mom and Dad for once, huh?"

"No."

They all groaned as Emma headed out.

David shut the door behind their daughter and asked his wife, "How worried do you think we really should be?"

888

 **AN** : Flashback Emma is a direct carry-over from Part I. She's hurt, angry, and conflicted. She still feels like she failed Neal when he died, that it's her fault he wasn't saved, but she's also angry with her parents and that's complicated. She's angry with her original timeline parents who refused to help Neal and kept the secret of her fetal-cursing from her, but they no longer exist so she can't even take it out on them - or ask them what their motives were. She's angry with her parents in this timeline for that and everything else, but their motives were influenced by the dark magic of Zelena's time spell and of Anna's curse insinuating itself into their meeting so they would behave like the parents she wanted, not the ones Emma knew. On the other hand, they all know that their behavior didn't come out of nowhere, that like while under the Dark Curse, the selfishness, jealousy, violent urges, neglectfulness, etc. were all facets of their personalities that were able to predominate because the dark magic suppressed the good qualities that kept those in check. In essoins, Zelena's spell/Anna's curse/the time travel resulted in everyone, but particularly those close to Emma, being skewed toward the worst versions of themselves. Which doesn't mean they couldn't have fought those urges. Both Regina and Rumple have demonstrated that there is a certain level of self-awareness beyond what that darkness clouds and that you can fight against the thrall of dark magic/curses/the dark spots in your heart. So what it comes down to for Emma in her ability to forgive her parents is how hard they fought? The unfortunate issue for all of them is that Snow and Charming basically chose to give up that fight before they even knew it would exist A) out of fear that Emma would leave town after she fled her brother's coronation given how badly they parented her in Neverland and B) post-time travel because their better natures would be in opposition to their daughter's increasingly selfish and cruel behavior which seemed intrinsically tied to her finding happiness if they were going to support the idea that Hook was her only back-up option following Neal's death, for which they felt guilty and doubly guilty for being unable to admit to their inaction that helped lead to his death. So for Emma to be happy and for them to avoid dealing with their guilt, Snowing sacrificed enough of their goodness that magic just began snowballing to the point that Snow White became someone capable of threatening cold-blooded murder of her grandson's uncle (and not even for a good reason) and David became someone incapable of seeking justice for his father. Essentially, Snow became more like her crazy assassin version from that Season 1 flashback as her daughter's revenge = justice (even though it doesn't) sidekick and David became more like when he was stoned on those glowing flowers around Rapunzel's tower that make people incapable of standing up for themselves and so was basically Hook's doormat. So while Emma has to deal with how to forgive a _conscience decision_ that had unintended magically-amplified consequences for her parents' personalities, Snowing have to deal with coming back to their more balanced selves, like after Emma broke the Dark Curse, but this time with deeper and more complicated consequences for their family. How do they make it up to Emma? How do they continue the close relationship they made with her sister under a variety of false pretenses now knowing that in the absence of dark magic they might not have been anywhere near as supportive of her behavior, behavior that Anna is far less capable of fighting against than they were.

 **End Notes**

·Someday I will understand how, to CSers, Killy demanding a kiss for saving her father or kissing her when she has no memory of him or telling her that she' s his happy ending or picking out a house for them to live in together is "letting Emma set the pace and never pressuring her." Someday I will be that far gone from good sense, but today is not yet that day. - violetfaust on tumblr

·Emma used to be a funny character. Now? She has no humor anymore. No humor, no sense of style, no compassion, no independence, no personality, no nothing. All she talks and cares about is Hook. She barely has any scenes with her family (that one she'd willingly give away if it meant to save Hook, a man who abused her, who constantly manipulates and lies to her, and who tried to murder THAT same family), and when she does, those involve nothing but Hook. She's become dull, desperate and pathetic. - anonymous on tumblr

·Look, I'm not a CS shipper so maybe I'm completely off base and totally off in my reading of them, but isn't this wedding ridiculous? Shouldn't they get married on the deck of the Jolly Roger at sunset with just their close family and friends there? Shouldn't Emma be wearing something light and ethereal that makes her look like an angel rather than buried under 40 lbs of tule and lace? Shouldn't her hair be down in princess curls or in a braid? Shouldn't she have a flower crown rather than a veil? Shouldn't we recognize the people in attendance? This isn't Emma's wedding. It's a spectacle for no other reason than having a spectacle. It doesn't fit the characters at all. It's the show fucking up yet again. It's incongruous and silly. -thatravenclawbitch on tumblr

·And they made her into a Grace Kelly cosplay... Also double misogyny points for implying Emma is feminine and vulnerable and somehow Uniquely Her Own Person Now in a…pretty standard and old fashioned wedding dress? Emma can be feminine in whatever she goddamn wants to be, and also feminine is not an intrinsically Good Thing (nor is vulnerable tbqh) Like the implication is that Emma's journey has lead her to femininity–embodied in a white wedding dress from the 50s– and that is…gross and sad and quite frankly hurtful to a lot of people. The level of implicit contempt for women who are not *feminine* (esp queer ones) is really undeniable at this point. - likehandlingroses on tumblr

·I think the problem is that on both sides of fandom, the concept of a "redemption arc" has gotten twisted to a point where it's basically meaningless. See, a lot of the time when the woobifiers say they want a "redemption arc" for their fave, they don't mean that they want that character to have to face the awfulness of what they've done or put any actual effort into changing or face any real consequences. They basically mean that they want the good guys to realize to realize their fave wasn't so bad all along and have them hug it all out or something, with maybe a token nod to the villain feeling regret, but nothing that really holds them accountable. So of course if you're thinking of "redemption" that way, you're going to have people on the other side saying "This character doesn't deserve redemption! They've done awful things!" Because yeah, they don't deserve unconditional forgiveness and support from the heroes. They don't deserve to have the slate magically wiped clean as if all the bad things they did never happened. But that was never supposed to be what a redemption arc was about. Real redemption is long and messy and hard, and it takes a really good writer to pull a proper redemption off. But when it is done right, it's not about letting the villain off the hook - it's exactly the opposite. - luanna801

·"Guys like that, they're everywhere. But it's guys like you that are the reason they get away with it." - Alison to brother Jason for not intervening in an instance of sexual harassment, _Madam Secretary_

·"I used to want my kids to have extraordinary lives. Now I just want some semblance of ordinary back." - Alex Kirkman, _Designated Survivor_

·"There's no such thing as normal. Love is the only thing that makes the fight worth it." - Barry, _The Flash_

·"Hmm. Well, my mother used to say, 'Encourage the quest for happiness in your children, even if it takes them very far away from you'. " - Nina, _Fringe_

·"Once you start changing it's not so easy to change back." - Robert Chase, _House_

 **Next up** : Henry makes a discovery, Emma makes an arrest, Neal and Regina team up to begin an unexpected quest, and everything is the result of too much teenage angst.


	20. V Is For Violet

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: I forgot to mention 'Christine' in the last chapter's end note. For any who didn't realize, the 1956 red and white Ford Crown Victoria is canonically the car that belongs to The Sorcerer's Apprentice as it was shown outside his house in the episode "The Apprentice". It didn't try to attack Hook and Rumple, of course. Let's say the spell didn't activate until after he was killed to protect the house until he could escape The Underworld.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY**

 **V IS FOR VIOLET**

 **(flashback)**

As he helped set the table in his grandparents' farmhouse, it felt to Henry that his family went a bit overboard with holidays. Maybe it was an immigrant thing, either the novelty of a new tradition or some desperation to adopt and assimilate-though there were certainly a lot of ways in which his family clearly had no desire to completely emulate a normal American family... or even an _abnormal_ one.

Thanksgiving was the one holiday that didn't seem to have anything similar in The Enchanted Forest. They could translate their winter and summer solstice customs into Christmas and the Fourth of July and even if there was no Valentine's Day, it was kind of that general theme every day in fairytale lands. Henry supposed that his family and everyone in town sort of saw themselves like Pilgrims, coming to a new and distant land and so it was a celebration of founding a new community and how after the Dark Curse was broken everyone helped out in finding the family and friends that they'd been separated from. Of course, most families weren't as dysfunctional as Henry's.

His family was like a bad soap opera with magic. So sort of like that old one the local TV station showed late at night called _Passions_.

"Why don't we all go around the table and say what we're thankful for?" Snow White cheerfully began after everyone had taken their seats. "I'm thankful to have this lovely home and a lovely family with which to share this meal.

"Neal?" she prompted the toddler in the booster seat who was already reaching for the mashed potatoes, probably to try throwing them, "what are you thankful for, sweetie?"

"PIE!" Neal shouted, probably what he wanted to be eating now, not what he was thankful for.

"Good answer, bud!" laughed David, ruffling his son's hair. "I'm thankful to have a working dishwasher instead of that piece of junk we had in the Loft. And also, family, of course."

"Some of us more than others which translates to barely at all," uttered Rumplestiltskin out of turn. "I suppose we have that in common, at least."

"Wine," said Regina with a deadpan expression and a slight sigh. "Lots of wine."

"I'll second that," agreed Belle as she kept Gideon from knocking her silverware to the floor and Snow scowled at both women. Her scowl increased when the bookish brunet added, "and setting down in a normal fashion instead of some bizarre mimicking of a painting depicting a foretelling of betrayal and death that also made it very hard to pass the salt and converse with anyone. Whoever's idea _that_ was..."

Henry winced behind his glass of water. Belle had become quite sharp-tongued since her brain tumor was removed and it was pretty obvious she didn't like his grandmother, maybe even less than his mother since she said Regina at least didn't pretend her intentions were good when she used someone and then screwed them over... or used Belle, anyway.

All eyes were on him now, he realized, and Henry shifted in his seat before glancing sideways and remarking, "I'm thankful to have my other mom back - so I won't have to be traumatized this year by walking in on Emma having sex with a diseased pirate in the potting shed when I get stuck taking out the my breakfast that Hook threw in the trash."

"Henry!" Snow gasped.

"Oh, we're _all_ thankful to not have the skank and the pirate here," Regina scoffed, clearly already tipsy. "Don't pretend you enjoyed them giving each other handjobs under the table the entire meal last year and being too preoccupied drooling in their food while making puppy eyes at one another to coherently participate in any table conversation even when we weren't your weird performance meal art.

"You tolerate their inconsiderate and slutty behavior," she continued, "because one of them is your child that you feel guilty for not raising her to be a respectable princess instead of a pirate's blow up doll - and now feel doubly guilty because she's actually cursed to be a selfish bimbo with an unhealthy sexual addiction that predicates using her lover to satisfy both her horniness and her devious intentions - namely to make her infuriatingly moral twin over there as miserable as possible, given a failure to kill her in the womb, by co-opting Emma's happy ending in a hideous house with a hideous man for whom she intentionally neglected Henry whose only escape while living in that house was taking out his breakfast in the trash."

Emma abruptly stood up, uttering, "Excuse me."

"Emma!" Snow called out as the blonde hurried from the room in the direction of the back door and then turned a scowling look on Regina. "I said not to bring any of that up! How many glasses have you had?"

"I chose not to listen to you, and the number required to get through this meal without cursing myself," Regina shot back after taking another sip of her wine.

"We all know this holiday celebration is a farce," Rumplestiltskin spoke up. "In the fine American tradition, we dislike one another immensely and yet punish ourselves once a year by setting down to a ridiculously large meal served inexplicably in the middle of the afternoon. If anyone here is expecting this not to be an acrimonious disappointment, then you're delusional. Don't forget," he addressed Snow and Charming specifically, "you failed to invite me and my wife last year and we haven't just forgotten that fact."

"It didn't seem appropriate when you were fighting after your son was kidnapped," David stated.

"Yes, our son that your wife and daughter threatened to murder in cold blood for sending your little princess' pirate on an unscheduled but not remotely dangerous sojourn that he was always already planning to take, coward that is without having his ego stroked with what I can only hope are lies," Rumplestiltskin replied, "or your wife has extremely low and troubling standards in her daughter's suitors to have been 'rooting' for a syphilitic three hundred year old pirate with a history of murder and rape over my son... or anyone else in this town who is not a murderer or a rapist... which, I realize, given the society we come from, doesn't actually leave quite as many options as one might think."

"Can we not talk about such... violent subjects in front of my son?" Snow huffed. "Don't you care what yours hears?"

"The truth?" he shrugged. "This family is full of terrible people who have done terrible things and gotten away with it, for the most part because you and your husband have let them. So, thank you for that, I suppose." He held up his glass of scotch. "I am thankful for your utter failure to understand the concept of justice even before you cursed two kingdoms with my mother's darkest of all spells and forfeited your right to lock us all in the dungeon of your choosing. Although, it would have been nice if you'd played your old hypocrisy card there and at least executed Regina's waste of magic sister whom, you may recall, murdered my firstborn after which he chose to sacrifice any attempt to save himself from her duplicitous fate so that Zelena could be defeated. Which she wasn't."

"And now she's moping back at her farm," Regina reminded, "because her daughter was erased from existence and she didn't want to sit here having you remind her of that."

"I thought it was because Emma refused to come if she was invited?" Belle interjected.

"Yes, well, I didn't even have to get that far once she knew Rumple was coming," scoffed Regina. "I mean, honestly, I killed one each of _their_ parents," she fingered Snow and Charming, "and they got over it eventually. Hook murdered Charming's daddy and he got over it the very next day."

"They also have had more concussions than an entire American football team combined. Not to mention," Rumplestiltskin amended, "that memory-removal potion tends to cause some irreversible brain damage."

"What!?" Snow gasped.

"Well, you could have requested a _spell_ , dearie, but you wanted-"

"The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!" Belle chirped.

"And now you the memory of a sixty year old woman," shrugged Rumplestiltskin. "Which, when you think about it, you actually should be. Just don't be surprised if you end up with early onset dementia. You might want to see Whale about that. And have you made a plan for what happens to your son should one of you get hit by a bus crossing the street and the other one also drops dead on account of you sharing a heart?"

"Rumple, that's a little mean," Belle sighed.

"You want to hear mean," David began and Henry stood up.

"What's wrong with you people? I'm pretty sure the holiday was _originally_ supposed to be about putting differences aside and helping each other. Which seems to be something this family only does when the town is in danger. The rest of the time no one can be bothered to step up and do the right thing without being begged, threatened, or blackmailed. Just being family should be motivation enough to help each other, but it never has been, has it? If we were all less selfish in that original timeline, it's no wonder Mom hates it here," he concluded before escaping to the kitchen the extra level of awkwardness he'd heaped on.

There Henry took a couple of slices of pie, not really caring that he left a big empty space in the dessert his grandmother had worked hard on that morning and probably wanted to slice herself.

He grabbed his coat and scarf from the peg in the mud room before heading outside in the direction of the barn where the cars were parked. His intuition had told him right, that Emma had retreated to the Bug. Henry wasn't surprised to find her there. Or that she'd run away. He'd figured out awhile ago that there were things she'd shared with her parents that had strengthened their connection once - but here those conversations erased and it left her a bit unmoored. His mom didn't feel like she could lean on his grandparents to help her adjust, so when she felt vulnerable and confused she retreated to her car, one of the few things left of her life before Zelena's spell that was relatively unchanged.

Henry knocked on the window and his mom reached over to unlock and push open the door.

"I brought pie," he said, handing her a plate and a fork, remembering a few days after a different Thanksgiving when they ate pumpkin pie on the hood of the Bug because Emma had told him that it was his dad's favorite, the only true thing in her story about Neal back then.

"Thanks. I'm sorry I bailed like that, Henry," she sighed, taking the plate.

"It's fine. Like Grandpa Gold said, it's kind of a farce anyway," Henry shrugged. "It's not like we're actually part of America here."

Emma picked at her pie. "That's true..."

"I kinda get it, you know," Henry told her. "When it felt like no one really saw me, really cared, I'd run off to my castle where I could pretend that wasn't really my life, imagine having the family I wanted."

"And is this it?" Emma asked him. "The family you wanted."

Henry shrugged. "Well, in the beginning, I obviously wasn't thinking fairytales. After I got that book..." He let out a sigh and admitted, "not exactly. Everyone's more complicated than storybook characters. More..."

"Thoughtless," grumbled Emma. "The people I remember could be selfish and they could be cruel, but... they were more self-aware of that. Maybe they felt bad, maybe they didn't, but they knew when they were being jerks, when their actions or inactions would hurt people."

"But Anna and Zelena don't, because they're 'Evil Twins', so that influenced how magic reacted to the time travel thing and affected everyone," nodded Henry. "I know. That's what Grandpa Gold said. It's probably why he drank that memory potion so he wouldn't try to save Dad. He just didn't care the way he should have anymore when Aunt Anna opened that portal. If the first spell hadn't been cast by someone cursed like that, if the portal back to the future wasn't created using that wand and channeling your magic through Anna, this universe wouldn't have been... set in stone in a kind of crappy foundation and the other more magically balanced one completely erased."

"Accept for my memories and my magic."

"Yeah," Henry grimaced and told her, "I'm sorry you lost all of that. And I'm sorry that I'm not the son you remember."

Emma's head snapped up. "Henry, you're-"

"Not him," he cut her off. "I appreciate what you said in New York, but we both know that I'm not, even if it's a sort of weird paradox. You talk about that me, how good he was, how much he cared about doing the right thing and helping everyone, and I know that's not me. Not as much as it should be. That other Henry probably wouldn't have suggested letting Marian die so his mom could marry a guy she just met because a missing page from a book said they were soulmates. He wouldn't have been okay with the woman who murdered his dad, even if she was his aunt, getting anywhere near him. Or let his other mom date a guy he knew was bad for her and a bad person -or left said guy to die and _only_ returned to save his useless ass after realizing his mom would probably be more upset Hook was dead than relieved that I was okay - and blame me for the rest of my life."

"No doubt about that," Emma agreed with a grimace, amending, "and I'm sorry my sister's being a bitch who put you at the bottom of her list made you feel like you deserved that or that it was okay, because it's not. And even if your moral compass isn't pointed as true north as I remember, Kid, for the record, I would have been completely okay with you leaving Hook to die."

"Noted," chuffed Henry.

"But you're still my son," Emma insisted. "It might be some quirky paradox, but you're still the kid who gave me morning sickness and stretchmarks even if my magic and memories come from another universe. I suppose I belong to both timelines, but it's the memories of the other one, the way my magic feels out of sync with this one that Zelena screwed up with hers, that makes it hard to feel like I belong here even if it's where I was physically born. My parents here are my parents, but... my magic, my heart, whatever... it feels the absence of my _other_ parents, the ones who met on that forest road. It's just... it's _tragic_ that they were just erased, that everything that came from that moment and all the moments after and made them the people I remember got turned into completely different moments that resulted in different people. And maybe if I was just me from here without those memories, without that original magic, I wouldn't care."

"But you also wouldn't have saved this world maybe and we'd all not exist," Henry pointed out. "You wouldn't carry in your heart the memories of those better versions of all of us, the stories of your parents whose meeting was pure and perfect instead of a contrived mess. Memories of having a son who cared as much about strangers as his family. Who would have fought for the right thing no matter what anyone said instead of going to The Underworld to retrieve an evil pen he destroyed because he's got crap convictions and more of his grandfather's interest in power than he should that helped almost destroy existence."

"We all got played there, Henry," Emma reminded. "And it was the adults who should have been looking out for you, not letting a little boy have that much power in the first place, figure it was suspicious. You were doing what you thought was right, what everyone told you was right, embracing your destiny instead of running from it. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle that for myself, what the right answer is. And I'm sorry that you're stuck with that instead of getting that put-together mother you had in New York who could make you a perfect breakfast in four inch heals and had time to play video games."

"Meh. High heals are stupid," Henry shrugged, "and you're too good at beating me, anyway. Playing Grandpa is way more fun. He's so bad and a worse loser. I've learned a ton of Enchanted Forest curse words I didn't know existed before."

"Wonderful," snorted Emma, but she smiled a little. "I'm still sorry that I'm a mess, Henry. And I'm sorry that you feel like... you're not the son I want you to be. It sucks feeling like I'm not the daughter my parents want me to be. But all you have to do, Kid, is resist the bad impulses that I guess have been harder to fight in this world and follow the good ones that should be easier to now on.

"What I'm thankful for is getting myself back with the time and the past experience to make sure you've got every chance possible to realize your potential to be an amazing person, because I didn't go through nine months of pregnancy and twelve hours of labor to bring some immortal and unimaginative idiot's plot device into the world."

"Ah... thanks, I guess," Henry replied, not exactly at ease with his mother talking about any of that stuff.

Rain started splattering against the windshield in fat drops and Henry looked back at the house where most of the rest of his family was probably eating in awkward silence.

"I guess I should get back. Maybe help my uncles start a food fight or something to break the tension."

"You've got my permission," Emma chuffed.

Henry smiled sadly at his mom. "I miss him too," he said, having noticed the slightly tattered picture she'd tucked into her pocket before letting him in. "But Dad wouldn't want you to be sad, you know?"

"I know," Emma replied. "I guess I'm just not ready to _not_ be sad. About any of it."

Henry nodded in understanding... or as much as he could understand. He'd barely gotten to know his dad, so he mostly missed him in those moments when he accomplished (or failed at) something. He supposed that his mom felt that emptiness all the time.

* * *

Neal's first morning waking up in the world of the living was... cold. Emma had hogged the blankets, bundled up like she was in a cocoon and oblivious to the clanking and sputtering of the old radiator in the corner. When he tried to retrieve them, she pulled the covers more tightly around herself muttering something about Ingrid, not feeling good, and not wanting to go to school.

Rather than disturb her further, Neal braved the chilly hardwood floor to reach the laundry basket and pull out some sweatpants, a hoodie, and some wool socks on the way to the bathroom.

Neal was swishing mouthwash from Emma's bottle on the vanity and trying not to over think the new chance at life he'd been given with all of its wondrous possibilities and possible disappointments, lest a panic attack break the chill facade he'd spent years perfecting, when the bathroom door was thrown open rather violently, startling him into a spit-take and coughing as a completely naked Emma flew into the small tiled space, dropped to her knees on the yellow bathmat, and wretched into the toilet.

"I fucking hate motherfucking nature!" she moaned before vomiting up more of last night's spaghetti. After which she finally realized she wasn't alone in the bathroom and lamented, "Damn, why couldn't you be getting the paper or something? Naked barfing is not sexy! A f-fuck! It's c-cold in h-here!"

"Yeah, no shit," Neal agreed, grabbing her bathrobe from the back of the door which Emma quickly pulled on after flushing the toilet. "And while any kind of barfing is not sexy, I still love you and think you're hot. Even when you're freezing and puking," he told her, tugging his black beanie down on her head. "And hogged the blankets."

Emma gave him a sheepish smile. "Sorry. Guess sleeping naked in January isn't the best idea when you've got a busted radiator."

"I'm sure I can begin earning my keep by finding a handy man's version of true love's kiss to put it back into working order," Neal joked. "If there's anything I can do to help you feel better-"

"Just let me curl up in a nauseous ball in peace," Emma answered, taking the bottle of mouthwash. "It usually doesn't last more than an hour. Also, I really have to pee, so... if I could have some privacy for at least one bodily function this morning, that'd be great."

"You got it." Neal dared to drop a kiss on her forehead, then shut the door after him.

At the sound of the newspaper smacking the front door as he reached the first floor, Neal retrieved the plastic-wrapped periodical while watching a miserable-looking paper boy kick Emma's insane garden gnome off his bike chain.

They definitely had to do something about that, Neal considered, carrying the paper into the kitchen to see if he could figure out hot chocolate making without those just-add-water envelopes he used for the rare winter day that he felt like having cocoa with those little marshmallows over a cup of joe. It was something he'd intended to learn to surprise Emma, a more concrete intention after they decided to move to Tallahassee, but after that it was hard to drink the stuff with or without cinnamon and not have his heart ache so he'd stuck with coffee.

"You add the milk last," Henry's voice interrupted Neal's pondering the box of cocoa powder and a bottle of milk at the stove while trying to unlock Hook's cellphone that Emma had picked up at her sister's house and given him to use.

"It's easy," the hat-and-scarf-wearing teen explained, grabbing the rest of the ingredients from the Pop-Tart cupboard. "Combine two tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons sugar, and a pinch of salt with just enough water to dissolve them in a medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until it boils, continue to simmer for one minute, then stir in one cup of milk until it's hot but doesn't start to boil, remove it from the stove, add a quarter teaspoon vanilla extract, pour it into a cup, top with whipped dream sprinkled with cinnamon. Granny puts cinnamon sticks in for effect, but that's kind of waste.

"And Hook's password is 'boobs' with zeroes. Also, his wallpaper is-"

"A shirtless selfie," snorted Neal, feeling rather like the child in the relationship at that moment. "Definitely not surprised."

"Used to be a shirtless selfie of _Aunt Anna_ ," Henry replied, dropping two chocolate Pop-Tarts into the toaster, "which is still traumatizing since she still looks exactly like Mom, plus or minus some scars and the glasses Mom wears most of the time now and more like how Mom would look if she was a crack addict or had terminal cancer or something, I guess."

After a shrug, Henry added, "You definitely don't want to look at Hook's photo album. It's dick and hook picks, creepy close ups of Aunt Anna sleeping, even creepier close ups of Gramps sleeping, and lots of downloaded pictures of dolphins and rainbows. He's seriously mentally unstable."

Neal snorted again in agreement while trying his hand at making hot chocolate according to his kid's recipe... which was probably Mary Margaret's recipe, since he vaguely remembered Henry mentioning that Regina didn't like hot chocolate but his grandmother did and she'd shown him how to make it back when she was still his memory-less fourth grade teacher and he'd sneak over to her and Emma's apartment without his adoptive mother knowing. His grandfather, however, according to Henry, could only "make" Pop-Tarts until the last couple weeks of Snow's pregnancy when she was craving pancakes so no longer having any servants (or memory of if he'd learned to cook anything in The Enchanted Forest that year) he had to get a crash cooking course from Granny.

 _At least I can make pancakes and scramble eggs without burning them_ , Neal thought as he poured water in the pot, trying to get the cocoa to dissolve over the heat.

"Looking forward to babysitting again today?" Neal asked, unable to help himself from ribbing the teen.

"No," Henry grouched. "Can you at least come over after taking Grandma's car in and visiting your brother and bring food from Granny's? If I have to eat another gluten free anything I might reconsider becoming a villain."

Neal laughed. "Sure."

A horn honked and Henry groaned. "That'd be my ride to Grandparents Duty."

"Then you'd better go before your other mom's homicidal car finishes digging itself out of the garage and takes it out on Regina's Mercedes."

Carrying the other mug and the newspaper upstairs, Neal found Emma back in bed hugging a pillow and looking pretty miserable.

"Henry didn't spit it out," he said of the cocoa, "so it's not horrible."

Emma sat up and took the mug, sipping experimentally. "It'll do."

"Wow, you guys are harsh!" groaned Neal and she smiled.

"It's very sweet of you. Thank you. Don't get offended if I throw it back up."

"I'll try not to give up my culinary dreams," Neal joked, sitting down on the side of the bed.

Unfolding the paper he suggested, "Wanna hear the front page story about your parents to cheer you up?"

"I detect sarcasm," Emma grumbled. "I don't like sarcasm in the morning." She sighed. "How bad is it?"

"' _ **New Year's Eve Party Crashed By Rampaging Royals**_ '," Neal read, "'It was the usual evening of end-of-the-year festivities in Storybrooke with residents attending parties to ring in the new year. While there are usually a few drunk and disorderly arrests and traffic tickets, the attendants of Dr. Viktor Frankenstein's gathering were treated to a couple of party crashers just after midnight when the legendary Snow White and Prince Charming, usually among Storybrooke's most upstanding citizens and public servants, rampaged onto the premises in their evening attire brandishing a sword and long bow.'"

Neal paused while Emma groaned and she grumblingly urged, "Keep going."

"'The couple proceeded to ransack the house, terrifying the invited guests and shredding house plants until their daughter, Sheriff Swan, arrived on scene to disable them and cart them off. According to Dr. Frankenstein, the two royals were dosed with some kind of hallucinogenic concoction, which our sources here at _The Daily Mirror_ have traced back to a party put on by Princess Abigail and Sir Frederick who claim to have no idea who might have dosed their friends. So who is this Party Potion Prankster? Or something more sinister behind this interior decor carnage? Whether this was a cruel humiliation exacted by an old enemy that intentionally put innocent people in harm's way or a wacky party prank gone wrong, one thing is clear: no justice will bring back Dr. Frankenstein's prized bromeliads or repair the arrow-holes in Goldilock's fur coat.'"

As he folded the paper back up, Neal wondered, "Is that implying that Goldilocks skinned those bears and made coats out of them?"

"I think she tried," Emma shrugged, "but they're actually cursed people because were-bears are apparently a thing where Merida is from. They ran the day spa for awhile, until someone found a toe in their footbath."

"Huh. Were-bears."

"Yep," Emma snorted and then smiled at him and his brows furrowed.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just like not being the most Fairy Tale Land ignorant person in the room for a change. And you actually grew up there!"

"In the most dirt poor backwater part of it three hundred years ago."

"No! Don't remind me of the three hundred years thing! It's creepy."

"I was in Neverland. It was like an evil all nighttime _Groundhog Day_ ," shrugged Neal. "And I'm pretty sure a couple hundred years there is like a few decades here. My grandparents had similar tastes in creepy-ass alternate realms of existence."

"Got that right!" Emma agreed and pushed herself up with a, "Gotta go barf again. Try holding my hair and I'll punch you in the face!"

Neal watched her hurry to the bathroom, slamming the door and winced at the sound of her retching, but obeyed her command even if he knew she wouldn't actually punch him in the face. Her sister? Now, Anna was the type to actually follow through with her threats, or even more likely just throw punches without any forewarning.

Flipping through the paper, Neal skimmed editorials and finally near the back discovered an odd little section called "Obituary Retractions", which he supposed was a legitimate regular column in Storybrooke.

 **NEAL CASSIDY, ALSO KNOWN AS BAELFIRE, FIRSTBORN SON OF RUMPLESTILTSKIN (MR. GOLD) who was laid to rest a little over two years ago following his death by the hands of then self-proclaimed Wicked Witch Zelena, returned to life last night after being released from a deceptive contracted by Zeus which he had signed under false pretenses on behalf of Emma Swan (until recently misidentified as Emma Jones, wife of Killian "Captain Hook" Jones, who has since changed her name to "Anna Jones"). Mr. Cassidy had served as Lord of The Underworld following the dethroning of King Arthur who briefly held the potion by the unlawful "first dibs" rule and is succeeded by magically spayed serial killer and brief Storybrooke villainness, fur aficionado, avid eyebrow waxing protester, and hotrod enthusiast Cruella de Vil. (Mr. Cassidy's coffin will be exhumed after the spring thaw and the plot and headstone will be available for repurchase 14 business days later if not reserved for reuse by the family before then. Visit the Storybrooke Cemetery undertaker for details.)**

"They're reselling my burial plot," Neal commented when Emma emerged from the bathroom.

"It's a small town. Resell plots or cut down trees," Emma shrugged. "When my sister was off in The Underworld being useless, the town selected Hook's plot by some warn-out headstone that no one could read anymore, so they dumped his dead ass on top of the one already there. I am totally getting my money back. If the coffin's still in good enough condition, I could buy a new furnace and maybe even afford a demon-possessed-car exorcist."

"Are they a thing?"

"I don't know. I'm broke. I didn't bother looking," Emma shrugged and started pulling on her uniform.

"Guess I should really look for a job then," mused Neal.

"Well, it would help. Hook just sat around on his ass for six months until my sister made him a deputy so he could get paid by the town for either sitting on his ass doing nothing, taping my sisters ass in her office, or beating people's asses for no good reason. Even if you're one of the good guys, I am not making you a deputy. There's enough nepotism in this town that I don't think it'd win me any points even if people are clinging to the whole monarchy thing."

"Probably true," Neal agreed, "and cute as you are in that uniform-" Emma snorted, "making out last night while you were on duty was as far as my _Fargo_ fantasy goes."

"I hope I was at least sexier than Francis MacDormand," Emma retorted, amending with a sigh as she fastened her belt, "I'm gonna have to order one of those awful maternity Sheriff shirts soon and the stretchy front pants. I can't even button mine anymore."

"If it makes you feel better, pretty sure those aren't any less attractive than the regular uniform," Neal joked and Emma threw some laundry at his head.

"Get dressed. You're taking my mom's car to the garage."

As Neal obeyed, Emma headed downstairs to find Henry's scarf still hanging on the rack by the door, her winter coat in a heap on the floor... and the ultrasound picture she'd shoved in the pocket the other night laying beside it.

"Shit!"

Emma dialed Henry's phone but it went to voicemail. She sent a text. Waited. No response.

When Neal came downstairs he found her standing there looking pale.

"What's wrong?"

"Henry knows," Emma answered with a groan, gesturing to the photo.

"You had a sonogram done?" Neal asked, smiling as he looked at the amorphous blob.

"Not the point. Henry-"

"Will calm down. You freaked when you found out your mom was pregnant, right? But you came around."

"Mostly I was just distracted by you dying and a crazy woman trying to kill us all," Emma countered. "Then I was conflicted about whether to stay in town or not until I fell down a time portal and my sister had a jealous fit over Mommy & Me class that made my magic go crazy. She came around, sure, but probably only after discovering my parents kind of massively suck at parenting so there's not much to be jealous of him for. I mean, they ditch him whenever possible to go on crazy family adventures. Maybe Anna was actually emulating them! But the point is, what if Henry ends up feeling exactly the same way and I'm just going to screw this kid up even worse than all of us!"

Emma was caught between bursting into tears and hyperventilating and Neal pulled her into a half hug.

"Henry's not going to end up feeling the same way," Neal reassured her. "And you're not going to screw up his brother or sister."

"You don't know that," Emma argued. "I'm already the runner up in his Mom pageant," she said, getting a furrowed brow from Neal. "Henry didn't know me until he was ten. Those fake memories don't count. I don't know if Henry will ever think of me the same way he does Regina. I mean, he calls me 'Mom' and everything, but like I said, even that's from the fake memories. I don't know if we have that connection anymore to go with it, though. That didn't bother me at first, when it felt like there was time to make a connection, but I got body snatched by my sister and Henry's like fourteen going on twenty-one thanks to the whole Neverland crap, and now I don't really know what we are sometimes."

"Maybe not," conceded Neal, "but you love each other. That's what matters most. And Henry isn't as grown up as he looks. He's faced a lot of crazy magical things that have forced him to know more about violence and death than most kids his age, but he hasn't faced those things alone, the way you and I did, and it's pretty clear that he's oblivious to the harsh reality of a lot of it-"

"Because because my parents," Emma rolled her eyes, "suck at acknowledging or dealing with the consequences of their actions, and my sister and Hook are even worse."

"You're a good parent, Emma," Neal told. "You did a really good job without any practice before the whole mess with Anna. You've got a level head. You've got a good sense of right and wrong. And you've seen both sides of that coin as far as foster parents go. You don't spoil Henry. But you're not a crazy disciplinarian like you said Regina was before. And other than Hook head-slamming you into a wall and taking a header off his ship into some metal rigging, you're far more concussion free than either of your parents, which also probably counts for something."

"I guess that's true," Emma conceded. "I haven't had nearly as many head injuries. I probably got more magical and medical treatment than they did back in The Enchanted Forest too."

Neal smiled and placed a kiss to her temple. "You're doing a great job with Henry, Emma. And you'll do a great job with his brother or sister. And maybe he'll throw a jealous fit, because he's a teenager and teenagers are moody assholes a large part of the time. But he's still _Henry_ under all those moody asshole teenager hormones, just like you're still Emma under all these moody crazy pregnant lady hormones. And those two people still love each other and just want to be a family. So give Henry a few hours to be confused and mopey and whatever. I'll meet him at your parents' place after lunch and maybe he'll vent about it and I can remind him that as long as his sibling isn't kidnaped by an evil fairy and turned into a psycho assassin, he should be happy."

"Yeah, you're right," Emma exhaled, smiling a little. "I just still feel so new to this parenting thing. And now Henry's old enough in the Enchanted Forest to be given a knighthood, which is basically a license to stab people with swords for no reason!"

"To be fair, in the Enchanted Forest, people were always getting attacked by someone or something," Neal reminded, "so it wasn't like to big deal to just stab some robber and leave him to bleed to death by the side of the road."

"That doesn't help!"

"Okay, maybe not," Neal conceded. "My point is that we're living in _this_ world and you've looked out for Henry whether you're in your right mind or not. And you tried to do as right by him as you could get your sister to besides, so don't doubt yourself, okay?

"And as for this kid," Neal continued, laying a hand against her stomach, "no matter how not yours Regina's memories are and maybe they're not gonna help with like Lamaze classes or how to work a breast pump or Mommy & Me class, that doesn't mean they're not good for knowing other important stuff like how to secure a car seat or use a rectal thermometer."

That got a snorting laugh from Emma and she asked, "Lamaze class, huh? You're gonna do all that funny breathing with me?"

Neal shrugged. "Lamaze or whatever one of those you want to do. If you want to give birth in a kiddy pool wearing a tiara, that's cool too. But if you wanna have this baby surrounded by fairies, I might have to object a little."

Emma smiled. "Don't worry. No plans here for a convent birth. And no fairy godmothers for our kids, that's for sure!"

Her phone chimed and she sighed when she read her father's text.

 _ **Henry just got here. He seems moodier than usual. Something happen with Neal?**_

Of course, her father would go right to Neal being the cause of it. He clearly had issues with her true love from the start, that maybe made sense then, but he hadn't outgrown them the way she had... or the way he seemed to have warmed up to and accept Hook which just aggravated her endlessly.

Emma typed back.

 _ **No. Mother-son issues. Just let him be moody for awhile. Neal will talk to him after lunch.**_

* * *

Trying to put Henry out of her mind, Emma spent the morning going down Regina's list of potions makers and suppliers, making house calls and stopping in small hole-in-the-wall shops she didn't even know existed, particularly in what seemed to be a lot of converted abandoned-but-never-actually-occupied warehouses where most of The Land of Untold Stories had ended up being housed in what looked a bit like something The Weasley family might build, held together by magic and a mix of multi-realm technologies and architectural styles.

The community wasn't that far from her new neighborhood, a cluster of a few large blocks behind the Cannery that Regina, apparently with some reluctant help from her sister, had used magic to turn into apartments and small commercial spaces for shops and other businesses like Aesop's Tables, the only time Emma had any recollection of her sister visiting this area. It reminded her of the established immigrant communities in New York City, if they were all thrown together into one weird bohemian mix of cultures. It was very different from the generic, small New England Town America that was Main Street and the rest of Storybrooke... not counting Arthur's old encampment, of course.

Even with the chilly, damp weather there was music drifting out of some shops and eateries and little stands of unusual arts and crafts items were scattered here and there making use of old pallets from the Cannery to display their wares... in one case, outdoor wooden furniture made from old pallets.

Emma discovered that those two Viking brothers her mother beat at darts ran a sauna/spa that also employed some non-Neverland (AKA: non-psycho/illegal-goods-smuggling) mermaids doing seaweed wraps and massages; who knew Vikings were actually known for excellent hygiene as well as warmongering? Apparently the duo were pacifists back home and were disinherited by their father and cast into exile to save the family their disgrace. Then there was a group of steampunk folk from Nemo's world who were using their brand of machine magic to customize cars and boats. A woman from Agrabah who'd fled an arranged marriage ran a small dance studio financed by a man from El Dorado who'd left his kingdom to seek out things more important than gold

Then there was a clearly popular cantina called Magical Meats (and Where to Eats Them) which drew Emma up to the order window with its mix of aromas even if she didn't understand much of anything on the day's chalkboard menu, and if a Kapa was what she thought it was, she wasn't sure she wanted to know the rest.

 _Fauth Stew (comes with 2 Guinness beer bread biscuits)_

 _Hu hsien Potsickers (served with hoisin sauce)_

 _Kapa Miso Soup (with seaweed and tofu; beak used to flavor broth but not included)_

 _Limoneads Grape Leaf Wraps (served with preserved lemons)_

 _Matzo Ball & Broxa Soup (cup or bowl)_

 _Paella Duende (choice of Kapa or Broxa stock)_

 _Wolpertingerworst (topped with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard, choice of regular or pretzel bun)_

 _Wood-smoke Barbequed Moksin Tongbop (served with kimchi)_

 _Yakitori Raiju (served with local wild mushrooms)_

 _Yakshas Curry (made with only vegetarian-friendly tree yakshas)_

"This place always has a curious variety," a voice startled her and Emma turned to find Jefferson carrying reams of fabrics under one arm. "The Kapa Soup and Yakitori Raiju makes for a good combination, especially when the kapa and seaweed are freshly caught and harvested. Always best to check the tidal schedule for that one."

"Um... I think I'll pass on the Kapa if it's what I think it is. I have no idea what any of these other... magical meats are," Emma admitted.

"Sometimes you don't want to," said Jefferson and he told the man behind the old-timey register, "Two Wolpertingerworsts on pretzel buns . You like pretzel buns?" he asked her then decided, "You have to try them, anyway. They're fantastic. And a Matzo Broxa bowl with a warming charm to go."

"You really don't have to," Emma began but Jefferson waved her off as the guy at the window called into the back:

"TWO SALTED JACKS AND AN ANGRY BIRD BOWL!"

"I poisoned you. The least I can do is buy you lunch. And can I say, it's so lovely to see you as yourself again," the still affluently dressed nutter told her with a smile.

"If you're flirting with me, my boyfriend just came back from the dead," Emma stated, "so don't get your hopes up. Plus, you did poison me, kidnap my mother, and try to shoot us."

"Oh, I'm not much into your type," Jefferson shook his head while getting napkins and utensils at the pickup window.

"What, sane people? Royalty?" Emma asked, confused.

"Har har. People with vaginas," Jefferson explained. "Grace's mother was the exception, though a bit of a unique case. There's a quite curious transgendering potion native to Oz. She was a he when we met but then ran out of potion and we made due. It was more about the feelings than the parts by then. Of course, that resulted in a nine month long consequence. A good one, mind you. Well, most of the time..."

"Extra kraut?" the server asked, handing over to paper-wrapped sausages on buns.

"Always!" Jefferson nodded and Emma shook her head.

Not wanting to get into Jefferson's strange gender bending sex life or what she was about to eat, Emma asked, "Back on the subject of poisoning, I'm looking into what happened to my parents the other day. I don't suppose you know anything about the apothecary over that way... or his supplier?"

"Her, actually," Jefferson corrected while squirting on more mustard, "and it's all herbalist stuff she collects herself from around town. She's probably out gathering mistletoe. She was low last week what with all the rain making harvesting difficult. But the most magical potion you'll find in her shop is the occasional bezoar, and that's only if they're making goat stew here and get lucky."

"So no help then," sighed Emma as they walked. She took an experimental bite of the sausage. It actually tasted sort of like the rabbits Mulan and her mother had caught and cooked for them during their six week camping trip. It wasn't terrible.

"You won't likely find any clues around here," Jefferson told her. "Everyone freed from The Land of Untold Stories and Jekyll's tyranny are just happy to pursue their dreams, write their own stories in ways that were not welcome back in the home worlds they fled or were forcibly exiled from. Storybrooke may not be perfect, but they've no interest in the political rumblings beyond not supporting those who want to impose the sort of backwards-minded monarchies they fled.

"Your parents may be traditionalists of a sort, but they seem to have learned the lesson of trying to impose their unilateral authority on the town after the Doomsday Crystal mess," Jefferson considered, "and besides, I don't think most of the people here are even aware that your parents are in any way more important than your average royal since many are not from The Enchanted Forest and even those that were often got stuck in The Land of Untold Stories before the love affair of Snow White and Prince Charming became an inspirational poster."

"So, basically, what you're saying is that this is the sanest part of Storybrooke," Emma mused and Jefferson laughed.

"Hence my frequenting it. Trying to maintain my sanity by osmosis," he joked, then added. "Since my realm jumping days are likely over - I had a bit of a relapse after using my new hat to evacuate the realms during Fiona's curse and Dr. Whale and Hopper advised me to hang it up - this is as close as I'm going to get to visiting all of those realms I used to frequent. At least my second hat got one good use in, and that's what matters. Sure, this place is not quite the adventure, but perhaps that's not a bad thing. I just wish Grace was more inclined to visit with me. I'd love to show her all of the cultures her mother and I visited. But teenagers... Grace tests my sanity now more than helping, truth be told. I can't wait for this puberty phase to be over with."

"Tell me about," Emma sighed, then asked, "With all that realm jumping, you'd know where someone could get hard-to-come-by magical creature parts for potions, right?"

"I suppose I might," the Mad Hatter replied. "I do dabble in some potions brewing myself for self-medicating purposes when I'm having a spell. Works better than changing the dosage of my antidepressants."

"Well, Regina says the potion used on my parents was mostly manticore venom. Would anyone from Camelot or The Land of Untold Stories traffic in that kind of exotic ingredient?"

Jefferson's brows were raised. "Oh, not very likely. I've been looking for a seller, actually. I acquired some during our one year sojourn to The Enchanted Forest for my self-medicating. But that's two years ago now and my stock is starting to go sour. I wouldn't want to mix _that_ and risk worse side-effects. The stuff becomes rather unpredictable."

"Yeah," Emma nodded, eyes narrowing. "It tends to make people violently hallucinate. Where exactly do you keep this stockpile of venom, Jefferson?"

"At my house," he shrugged. "I haven't used it in awhile. As I said, it was starting to go, so I've been making due with Whale's meds. Before this whole apocalypse thing, I was hoping to schedule a trip on Captain Nemo's vessel and locate a resupply," he explained. "Perhaps commission a poacher or two to accompany me. The whole legality thing is a gray area now, what with Midas' kingdom being emptied out by the Curse, and I was going to ensure they only milked the manticore rather than killing it for its venom sack. I would never condone killing endangered magical creatures, even the sort that like to stab people with a paralytic and then sing about how tasty they're going to be as the poison slowly stops their lungs and heart."

"Lovely," Emma grimaced. "Well, how about humoring me and taking me to check out your supply. And don't offer me any tea."

* * *

Jefferson's house was just as ridiculously large on the outside and 60's rock star on the inside as Emma remembered. After shutting the front door, the Mad Hatter called out, "Grace!? I'm home! I brought soup! Sheriff Swan is here so if you're wearing those so-called pajamas that make you look like one of those slutty girls on that show you like to watch, go and change!"

The blonde teenage girl was sitting on the furry couch in the livingroom painting her toenails and rolled her eyes. "Please, I know you like watching the Kardashians as much as I do. I've found the episodes half watched on the DVR. And I thought you said Sheriff Swan was the biggest slut in town? No offense, Sheriff Swan."

Jefferson glowered at his daughter and set the plastic bag with soup cup on the coffee table. "I was talking about Emma's sister. She has a twin, remember? It was all over the paper for weeks. We went to Anna Jones' re-wedding parade."

"I don't read the paper, Papa," Grace reminded. "And everyone around here has two names and wasn't there something a few years ago with the mayor having an evil twin that banged Mr. Gold?"

"More like a year ago," Jefferson corrected, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "and this is the original Sheriff _Swan_ who broke the Curse, not her slutty Evil Twin who was using her name and getting STDs from that pirate. And for pete's sake, Grace, close your legs!"

"You really are terrified of vaginas," Grace rolled her eyes. "It's a wonder you and Mom ever made me."

Jefferson just huffed and told Emma, "I keep my supplies in my study."

On the way upstairs he lamented, "You see what I have to put up with? And she still spends a week every month with her mother's cousins who looked after her when Regina trapped me in Wonderland. I'm grateful to them for that, but they're far too lenient with Grace - or Paige as she goes by when she's at their place."

"Yeah, I hear you," Emma nodded. "My sister and her husband barely acknowledged Henry's existence most of the time so between my parents always being preoccupied with their own problems and Regina overwhelmed by the political problems in town, apparently no one told him it's wrong to have drunk sex with your girlfriend at _fourteen_... and it sounds like the damn pirate actually endorsed that sort of behavior. And I happen to know from personal experience that stolen condoms don't guarantee avoiding those nine month consequences."

"Ah, but we love them anyway," Jefferson sighed.

Emma followed into a familiar room with hats that now had a large steam trunk in the corner where the child's play set used to be.

"I don't do any brewing here," he explained, fishing a key from his pocket. "I use the guest house out back just in case something... well... explodes. But I keep my more high-end ingredients locked up here with my regular medication, just in case. I've had some of the forest dwellers wander onto my property and try squatting in the out buildings."

He unlocked the trunk and opened the lid, then dug around a bit under boxes with orange prescription bottles only to frown. "I know it was here when I locked up my pills last week. No one else knows where I keep it or even that I have it... other than... GRACE!"

Back downstairs the blonde was eating her soup.

Jefferson demanded, "Did you break into my trunk and take my manticore venom?"

Grace snorted. "Why would I do that?"

"Grace Paige Vanderveen-Vanwinkle you will tell Sheriff Swan everything you know. _Now_."

"Wait... Vanwinkle?" Emma uttered. "As in Rip... you know, never mind. Not important right now.

"Did you tell anyone about the venom?" she asked the teen. "This is serious, Grace. People could get hurt."

Grace thought a moment, then admitted, "Oh, I guess I told Violet."

" _Violet_? As in Henry's ex-girlfriend?"

"Yeah, she was my partner for a school project. The subject of manticore came up somehow, and I mentioned that Papa," she glanced at her father, "kept some venom for his meds and how we went on this, ah, camping trip to get the stuff. Maybe I mentioned offhand the trunk was his meds stash," she shrugged, "when we were using the arts and crafts supplies in his office. I know Henry can pick locks. He bragged about it like a total douche. Don't know why I ever had a crush on him. No offense. Maybe he taught Violet how."

"Why would your son's ex poison your parents?" Jefferson wondered. "Did they not approve on some royal grounds and get him to break up with her? I can't see it being an issue when your father's a peasant by birth and the lad's already a bastard..."

Emma scowled at that description. "I don't know, but she broke up with him and it's not related to my family, so there has to be another reason."

"Maybe she didn't steal it for herself," suggested Grace. "I know her father gets harassed by the other Camelot people who supported Arthur even after his plot against Merlin. She had to ride her horse here that day we had to work on our project because his car tires got slashed. Most of them hate your parents, right? Could be they agreed to leave her dad alone if she got them some giant scorpion spunk."

"It's venom from their tails, not their..." Jefferson waved his hand in annoyance.

"A sack's a sack," quipped Grace with a shrug before complaining, "You forgot the extra tofu, Papa."

"You know," Jefferson griped, "you were a lot more pleasant when I just watched you from a distance."

"And you were a lot less traumatizing when you just left creepy cards in my bicycle spokes, Captain Underpants."

"I'll leave you to... this," Emma decided, letting herself out. It was at least nice to know she wasn't alone dealing with annoying teenagers. Now if she could just wrap up this case and have an awkward conversation with hers...

* * *

The arcade was dark, which suited Henry just fine as he took out his frustration on video games, then moved on to Whack-a-Mole when he found his concentration too scattered to put up a decent score. He knew he was being a shit by not waiting for his dad to pick him up, but he just couldn't stand listening to his uncle cry over his latest teething issues, reminding him that the house he'd only just gotten to share with his mom and _now_ his dad too was soon going to be filled with a squalling little replacement just like his grandparents had done to his mother (and his grandfather and step-grandmother to his father instead of trying to save his dad), which just ticked him off all the more!

Probably stealing Geronimo and riding into town wasn't the best idea, but at least there was a now a horse hitch out back and he'd made sure the horse had a blanket and some oats while he went inside to mope.

The last couple of years were sometimes the best and at other times the worst in his life. Admittedly, Henry wasn't even old enough to legally drive a car yet, so it wasn't a very long life and not even artificially extended by curses or timeless realms. But it was a lot to take in. As a little kid, much of the violence and morally questionable acts and sex-related stuff just went over his head and it seemed like a grand adventure after his preadolescent years of a boring, isolated, and soul-destroyingly-routine life. After a year in New York City, though, he'd gone from adolescence to teenager-hood and his perspective on a lot of things had changed. And, of course, on top of that his father had died and his mother had (seemingly) immediately started dating Killian Jones.

It wasn't that she'd started dating so soon. Well, not really. Sure, that aspect of it did tick him off, but Henry knew it to be true from his grandfather that his father's dying wish was for his mom to be happy and make sure Henry shared in that happiness. _That_ was the issue. Killian Jones was a straight up stalkery asshole who didn't give a shit about Henry or anyone but Emma and Emma only in as much as she did what he wanted, was the person he wanted her to be-the person with him. It was all kinds of messed up. But he'd tried to deal. To compromise.

Like that ugly-ass house. It was Hook's idea, clearly an attempt to act like he cared to win points with Emma when she was all Dark One broody and weird. So Henry had gone along with it. Sure, he'd thrown in a hopeful sabotage in his assumption that Emma would hate that specific house _and_ the idea of someone _buying_ it for her... even if she hadn't seemed adverse to Hook trading a ship for her. Henry had known that he was pulling at straws, but on principle, scheming on either side aside, it was trying to imagine that a future even existed beyond the "Dark Swan" insanity with his mother in it... awful mother as she'd already become.

The way Henry had seen it then, Emma had begun changing when his father died. In retrospect, he supposed she was just in shock then and overwhelmed by Zelena and him not having his memories. It was only like a week later that he got his memories back and Zelena cast her spell, so admittedly, he didn't have the best mindset himself to judge his actual mother until right before she literally stopped being his mother.

He hadn't known that, though. It had just seemed like the lying and avoidance of his pre-memory-regaining period escalated into full-on deadbeat parent status. Henry had tried to deal. He'd tried to accept it the way he'd tried for years to accept Regina putting work before him. Sure, it hurt to assume his mother was writing him out of her life because she reminded him of his father and that made her feel guilty about being with Hook, particularly given the history regarding his grandmother Milah, but that hurt less than thinking she'd just stopped caring, that the True Love that had saved his life and broken the curse had faded, been eclipsed by something new and romantic and maybe never even existed at all between his parents, shattering that illusion all kids probably had their parents shared something special.

His book was always big on romance and short on any other kind of love, so it had seemed like the way of things and Henry had grudgingly believed and accepted that... for as long as he had to before he could change it. No deal, though. Even Authors didn't have control over "reality", or as he supposed it actually was: a world not bound to a magical book. And hoping he could get his father back from The Underworld in place of Hook and get his mother to see what a selfish jerk was being hadn't worked either.

Instead, she had moved in with the pirate in their ugly house and fully devolved into a weepy, clingy, needy, violent-tempered, selfish, unapologetic jerk who was essentially a blonde, female, two-handed version of Hook. Who, like Hook, only acted like she cared about Henry if it benefited her somehow and ignored his existence the rest of the time.

She hadn't cared when Hook threw his breakfast in the trash, when Henry ditched school, when he went out without word and came home late or not at all. She didn't seem to care if he was out with Violet and didn't notice that he'd never made any other friends. She didn't help him grieve for his dad or encourage him to have a relationship with his grandfather (rather discouraged it viciously if Gold was even brought up). They didn't play video games anymore or get hot chocolate at Granny's. She watched Netflix with Hook and drank coffee and threw his dad's dreamcatcher in the trash with the rest of them. And worst of all, she either didn't even remember he was around to tell him when she thought she might die or she didn't care to tell him because she was more concerned with _Killian_ losing the happy ending he apparently deserved for some reason that was invisible to everyone else than Henry losing his.

That's what had sucked the most.

Not that his mom couldn't "give in to love" for his dad after he saved all of them but could for some deadbeat asshole pirate who didn't care about any of them and who none of them gave a shit about in return. Not even that she failed to find and defeat Zelena to make his sacrifice worth it.

Emma had promised his dad that his happiness was as important as her own. She had promised that Henry wouldn't grow up like they had, feeling alone, abandoned. _And she had broken both promises in only a few short months._ It was baffling and infuriating and ultimately Henry had felt useless to do anything but support her selfishness. There was a glimmer of hope during Fiona's curse when taking his mother to the rooftop where she got married did jack shit to restore her memories of dressing up like a life-sized lace doily from Granny's parlor; during that awful ceremony, all he could think was that the Emma Swan whom Henry had loved would have punched Mrs. Emma Jones in the face.

But for some reason the body snatching possibility had never crossed his mind. He'd just given in to sharing a creepy house with the mother her had to share with a stepfather who sold his actual father to a child abusing demon and didn't even seem sorry. There was Emma grieving in her own way and then there was just being an insensitive bitch who'd apparently been half right when she gave up because she thought she couldn't be a mother. Half because it was more that she didn't _want_ to be a mother. Not to him, anyway.

He'd just accepted that. And now he felt shitty that he had, even if his mom said it wasn't his fault. It still sort of was. And now two years had been lost for them on top of the first ten of his life. Not to mention with his dad. It just felt like all the important moments in his life, the ones shared with parents, had passed them all by. Regina hadn't cared enough to appreciate them for more than how it flattered her for most of his life and his birth parents were absent once she finally got a clue and stopped being a selfish bitch and wasn't being obsessive and weird over Robin, and then most of what his mother did was just trying to shield him from the trainwreck of his presumed other mom's love life with painfully obvious distractions.

Which brought things to the present. A present in which Regina was once more distracted by work most of the time - though Henry couldn't blame her now - and Emma was an emotional wreck most of the time - for which he couldn't exactly blame _her_ either. Then his dad suddenly came back from the dead and that was cool for all of a day and a half before he had to go and search his mom's jacket pockets for candy stashes and found that fucking sonogram!

"Henry?"

Missing the mole he was whacking at, Henry turned and gave Violet a sheepish look. "Er... hey."

"Are you okay? You see a little... um... manic. I hope... it's not because of us?" Violet asked, wringing her hands nervously.

Henry sighed. "No. It's... family stuff. Yesterday my life was great. My dad was back from the dead..."

"Your dad? Really?"

"Yeah, some reward for helping Hera take down Zeus," Henry explained.

"Well, that is great isn't? What could be so awful today that has you beating up fake forest creatures?"

Scowling, Henry answered, "My mom's pregnant."

Violet's eyes widened. "Oh. You mean... your birth mom? But... um... if your father was until recently dead...?"

Henry shrugged. "I dunno. Weird shit happens in my family, obviously."

"So... now it's not just your parents with siblings born far apart," Violet mused. "Maybe it's a new weird magical family tradition?"

"Feels more like a curse," grunted Henry. "I know Mom was never thrilled about my uncle, even if she said she's not jealous of him. Maybe that's cause my grandparents are kind of crap at parenting and almost got him killed when he was like two minutes old," he snorted. "And I don't really know how my dad really feels about Gideon. But none of that will probably translate to them having a kid together. I mean, it's the chance they didn't get with me and I'm old enough to take care of myself, so now I won't get to spend hardly any time with either of them!" he concluded in a huff, whacking another mole.

Violet smiled in her understanding way. "I'm sure it feels like your happiness got usurped by this, Henry, but at least you have both of your parents _and_ another mother and grandparents, enough to offset the homicidal extended family. Me... it's just me and my father. All of his family died centuries ago while he was trapped in Camelot and, sure, we could try to track down his siblings' descendants and pretend we're long-lost cousins, but we wouldn't be able to tell them about any of this so it wouldn't be the same.

"Would I be upset if my mom came back and she and my dad suddenly had another baby?" continued Violet. "Or if my dad remarried and had more children? Of course I would. My sister or brother would get everything that I never had. There would be bedtime stories and riding lessons and all sorts of things I didn't have while my father was grieving my mother's death more than he was raising me. But... I'd also be getting someone else to call family, someone who'd look up to me and probably think I was really cool and smart, unlike most everyone else who knows me and thinks I'm a weird foreigner who'll never understand or be part of this town the way they are. Plus, throw liking girls into it."

"Who knows, that might make you cooler?" Henry shrugged. "And maybe you're right. I don't know. I want my parents to be happy. I mean, I bent over backwards to endure Hook being part of the family when I thought my mom loved him, because I didn't want her to be miserable and alone forever after my dad died, even if that turd was never going to replace him and I fantasized about killing him in various creative accidental ways, wishing I had more of my grandfather's asshole-ness in me to actually go through with leaving him to die on Nemo's ship. And back when we all thought those two freaks were having a kid, it sucked, but by that point-"

"Your assumed your mom was basically Hook in a dress and had resigned yourself to not being part of her happy beginning," Violet nodded, remembering all of his emotional tantrums leading up to and after the wedding she hadn't attended because of the flu. "I know you'd emotionally distanced yourself from her to keep your sanity and now you finally were able to start connecting with her again-"

"And now instead of taking a family trip to Disney World this summer," Henry sighed, "I'll be helping paint a nursery. And I'm pretty sure Whale wasn't gonna get fooled again by demon spawn, so it won't be repurposed into a sex toy storage room after a demonic gremlin burrows out of my mom's stomach and rampages through town."

"That was kind of cool, though," Violet sniggered, "you have to admit."

"Yeah, it was pretty awesome," Henry agreed, recalling his not-mom's sudden, inexplicably accelerated pregnancy and them rushing her to the hospital but not in time for Whale to do anything as the "baby" sliced its way out of her swollen stomach like something out of _The Walking Dead_ and revealed it clearly wasn't human as it bared bloody fangs at them and then flew out the window that Whale complained was still not repaired properly from when Flying Monkey Little John flew out of it. While Hook had fainted, Whale had kept Anna from bleeding to death until Regina got there and splashed some anti-Incubus potion in the wound to heal her up good as new.

Thankfully, they'd decided to put off actively trying to have a child for a bit after that... or rather his aunt had decided to cockblock Hook without him knowing that they weren't trying because he was hell bent on replacing Henry with his own progeny and like the pirate she never wanted to hurt his feelings with like honesty and shit so it was just easier to lie in the rare instance she wasn't laying on her back for him. But since their actual first born would be a cursed psychopath with Hook's regular asshole genes that ate its better half in the womb, those two reproducing for real probably wouldn't be any better than an Incubus.

At least, Henry supposed, whatever kid his actual mother popped out wouldn't be an Evil Twin and probably not terrible either just based on genetics if his dad had gotten what little good his own parents passed on without the selfish jerk genes and his mom didn't seem to have inherited his other grandfather's violent tendencies or grandmother's stupidity. Although, to be fair, her diminished mental capacity was apparently due to the potion she got from his Grandpa Gold and lots of head injuries, but she was also like really girlie and domestic, which Emma wasn't, so if he ended up with a sister or gay brother, hopefully the odds were less of having the house taken over by fashion trends and squeeing over boyfriends... although he'd hopefully not be living at home when his sibling was old enough to date...

"I'm sure this was a shock for your mom too," Violet pulled Henry from his wayward thoughts. "I mean, who plans to get pregnant in Hell? I'm sure she's just as worried that this will screw things up between you. She's not your aunt, Henry. She has issues with her brother and she'll totally sympathize and I bet try to handle things better than her parents have with her. At the very least, she won't name your brother or sister after some recently killed loved one of yours."

"Hey, you're insinuating I'm going to end up with more dead loved ones!" Henry huffed, then shrugged, "But it is kind of a thing with us. What if it was Aunt Zelena and Mom and Dad named their next born after her? That'd be so weird! Aunt Anna and Hook totally would do that, though. They were gonna name their not-actually-a-kid 'Robert' after my great grandpa that Hook _murdered_ which should actually be my uncle's name since Robert was really a great guy instead of a deadbeat alcoholic.

"I think they should change his name," Henry continued, "but he's just figured out that his name is 'Neal' and that'd be confusing so it's probably too late. Which I guess means my dad is going to have to go by 'Baelfire' now, which is weird and I don't think he likes it much. It was kind of a cruel joke of a name by his mom, I think, like Grandpa Gold's father giving him a shitty name just to take his anger at his ex wife out on their kid. My family is so fucked up!"

"Everyone's family is fucked up, Henry," Violet argued. "Stop being so full of yourself."

"I'm fourteen. I'm supposed to be full of myself."

"Fine, then be full of yourself by normal teenager standards, not full of yourself by your already full of themselves family's standards," Violet corrected. "It makes you twice as full of yourself as everyone else our age. It's why you don't have any other friends. Well, that and the propensity for people close to your family getting murdered by recently revealed other family members. Can't you just use that globe of your grandfather's to find all your blood relations, check up on them with a crystal ball or mirror magic spell, and then go imprison or kill the evil ones?"

"I think you have to actually personally know them to get that specific," shrugged Henry. "Best Mom was able to do was find all of Hook's blood relations in town to make sure I didn't date any of them... or possibly to get him drunk enough to sleep with like his great great great granddaughter and then reveal it at a family dinner just to see how creepily not disgusted anyone would be and how long it would take my aunt to shrug off him incest cheating on her as being all my mom's fault for manipulating him rather than him being a manwhore who'll only 'love'," he made air quotes, "my aunt because he has an obsession with owning her like property and that's totally different from where he sticks his dick, not that even he'd admit to that. Like I said-"

"Your family is fucked up."

"But so is everyone else's," sighed Henry ,"so I'll try to stop being a totally narcissistic dick like my uncle and give my parents the benefit of the doubt."

"Good."

Henry smiled a little. "Why'd you have to be so smart?"

"I don't know," shrugged Violet, "but it's a good thing I like girls, because then you'd look really dumb with a super smart girlfriend like me," she teased.

"Oh, ha ha!"

Violet frowned. "I am really sorry that I didn't figure myself out sooner, Henry, and got you involved in my own mess. You really are a good, kind person when you're just being yourself and not hung up on what your family expects or what you think you need to do to be part of their dumb hero squad. I know now that I need to be myself, to stop being afraid of what people will think, including my father, so you should be yourself too.

"You don't need magic powers or dragon-slaying skills," she told him. "It wasn't you being that author or your royal family that made me like you and want to hang out with you. And, okay, maybe wanting to tick my dad off because he thought writers were losers was part of it at first, but once we came here and he got over that I wouldn't have stuck around if you weren't just a nice guy who made me feel like I wasn't weird. Just... try to be that more often. And maybe don't slack off on your school work so much that you can't even get into an online fake university and have to make your quest in life realm-jumping until one day you wake up hallucinating cartoon birds and get diagnosed with whatever Grace's dad has and show up to your kid's career day in your underwear when you run out of meds."

"Thanks, I thi-"

"THE DWARFS ARE GOING CRAZY!" someone at the front of the arcade shouted just before the sound of car alarms drown out the arcade games.

Kids and stripe-shirted employees hurried out to the sidewalk to see the Seven Dwarfs rampaging down Main Street with their pick axes, smashing car windows, store fronts, and mail boxes while singing a song that was more of a very dirty limerick of the sort Hook would use to drunkenly serenade Henry's aunt.

As they reached the post office, Grumpy and Dopey suddenly abandoned the group smash fest that had turned into more of a peeing names in the snow fest to argue heatedly until they were throwing punches.

Which was when Henry's adoptive mother appeared from the direction of the town commons and with a wave of her gloved hands knocked the seven angry men out cold. Moments later, Emma pulled up in her car.

"A little late, Sheriff," Regina admonished.

"I was investigating the origin of the magical acid," Emma answered. "It was stolen from Jefferson. _By Violet."_

"Wait _what_!?" Henry sputtered. "No way! Why would Violet-"

"She's right," the brunet admitted, shoulders falling.

"Why would you do such a thing?" Regina demanded.

Emma interjected, "Grace figured it was to pay off Arthur's exiled supporters to stop them harassing her father."

"It wasn't for them," Violet answered, shaking her head. "When we had a school fieldtrip to the hospital this janitor pulled me aside. He said Dr. Whale had talked about Mr. Jefferson having some spoiled manticore venom and he knew I was in Grace's class. He also knew I was... well that I Iike girls but I hadn't told anyone."

"So he blackmailed you to steal it?" asked Henry.

"Not exactly. Maybe he was going to," shrugged Violet. "But I knew about manticore venom from back home, what it could be used for, and I said I'd steal it for him if he'd use the first batch to brew a potion I could use to make Mary's parents embarrass themselves."

"Mary... Contrary's parents?" Emma asked.

"When she came out at the winter formal," Violet explained, "they made her quit the volleyball team. And she hasn't been into town at all over winter break. Gretel said they're threatening to take her back to The Enchanted Forest as soon as the barrier spell is shut off to cure her of this Land Without Magic nonsense."

"They're not known for being tolerant," Regina recalled. "I was at Granny's the morning they discovered Ruby had 'turned lesbian' and run off to Oz and let's just say they're lucky Granny didn't fetch her crossbow before kicking them out for voicing their opinion on the matter. I can definitely understand wanting to humiliate them."

Emma looked over her case notes. "And they were at Abigail and Frederick's party." She raised a brow at Violet. "And you were my parents' house as an alibi, I take it?"

Violet's shoulders slumped. "Gretel said she'd dose the drinks. But it was _my_ idea. Please don't arrest her! Arrest me!"

"I'm not going to arrest you, Violet," Emma sighed. "Or Gretel. I don't think Jefferson or my parents will press charges. But I have a feeling Mayor Mills might give you some community service."

"That does seem likely," Regina agreed. "Less likely as a punishment for whomever brewed that potion. And who exactly is this janitor? I'm guessing it's not Leroy. He can't even brew floor cleaner without mixing bleach and ammonia."

"Jack Horner."

"Little Jack Horner who drilled a hole in the corner of the girl's locker room," Henry recalled. "He put his hand in his pants and he pulled out his willy and said-"

"He got caught peeping on the girls, making videos," Regina cut him off. "It was only a few weeks before the Curse broke. He was suspended while the school considered expulsion and pressing charges, but then it was decided no one could be held accountable for their Cursed actions so he was allowed to return and graduate with his class. It should be easy enough to find his address from the hospital."

"I met him in the woods, to drop off the venom and to get the potion," Violet offered. "Near Hiking Trail 13. I think he has his lab out there."

"Then I have a pretty good idea where that lab is," Emma considered.

"Well, at least we can get this mess cleaned up quickly," Regina stated, telling Emma, "so you can get back to trying to appease all the citizens your sister and her manchild husband brutalized."

"I'm really sorry, Miss Swan," Violet reiterated. "I feel pretty stupid."

"I'm sure you do. It's called puberty. It passes," Emma joked, then turned to her son and admonished, "I get that you're upset about the... ah... thing you found earlier, Henry, and we'll talk later. Right now, I have a pervy little shit to arrest."

Emma didn't give him time to respond, instead getting back in her car and heading toward the forest.

Regina turned to her son and his pale-faced girlfriend. "I suppose I need to transport these seven idiots to the hospital before they wake up and start hallucinating and urinating again. You can help with that, Henry."

"Do I have to? I have Geronimo out back."

"Then Violet can take him and muck his stall as part of her community service."

"Isn't that indentured family service?"

"If it frees up my time to work on keeping this town from being overrun by pitchfork and torch carrying nutters from Camelot, their brainwashed followers, and those two idiot puppet royals, then it counts as community service. Start loading those pickaxes into my trunk."

* * *

Emma turned off the highway onto Old Yale Road, continued past the playground and further still beyond the stables to the where the road became gravel and ended at a jogging/riding path that, not surprisingly, had the muddy tread marks of an ATV bike which she found about a quarter mile up the trail and off into the woods a few hundred yards by an Air Stream trailer.

She'd never figured out where the trailer had come from. August hadn't brought it and told her (or her sister rather) that he suspected it could have been out there before the Dark Curse was cast and that magic kept it, like everything else in town, relatively unaged. There had been nothing but an old bong and some early 1980s era cans of beer in it before a puppet and a typewriter occupied it. Now, however, colorful smoke was billowing from an exhaust stack.

A dirt bike was parked by a tree strung up with Christmas lights and Emma crouched to pull out a spark plug before making her way toward the door. Of course, before Emma had even reached the door, it flew open and the young man burst out with a backpack over his shoulder.

"SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT! STOP!" Emma shouted, which never seemed to work.

The kid went for his bike as she'd expected and the time it took him to realize it wasn't going to work was all the time she needed to fire off a shot at the ground and demand he, "FREEZE! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM! GET OFF THE BIKE SLOWLY!"

Jack Horner complied, but then the snapping of a twig behind her got Emma to turn and suddenly there was a sharp pain in her side as she blinked at what turned out to be a deer.

She turned and Jack was running, but her feet wouldn't move and then her fingers went slack and her gun fell to the forest floor. Blood, she realized, was staining her shirt on her right side where she'd felt the brief pain - and something that looked like a very large and black stingray spine was protruding from her body, the blunt end dripping some kind of viscous pink goo onto the ground.

"That can't be good," she tried to say, but her tongue and jaw weren't working right, and then her legs weren't either and it was actually getting rather hard to breath, she realized as she slumped to her knees and managed at least to list sideways instead of face down.

This definitely was not good at all.

* * *

"I really do feel bad about all of it," Violet apologized while handing Geronimo over to Neal.

"You're still a kid," Neal told her. "Kids do stupid..."

He trailed off as he felt a strange shiver run through his body. Something was wrong with Emma. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did.

* * *

Neal knew the hiking trail where Violet had met Jack Horner; he'd crossed it with Emma after Cora had sent them to the forest. As that disconcerting feeling grew, he urged Geronimo toward the woods, glad he'd skipped stopping at Granny's for lunch before returning the somewhat fixed Suburban to Emma's parents.

The thick woods of the Wildlife Preserve ran adjacent to The Charming farm and just as he was about to reach the trail head, a figure emerged from the treeline, a lanky young man in jeans and a blue jacket - with a bloody hand. Neal wasn't generally a violent tempered person, but when the man stumbled at the unexpected site of someone so close and then bolted back into the woods, Neal gave chase. Riding horseback through a forest wasn't exactly easy as the guy was at least smart enough to stay off the trail - and neither was he the priority when the feeling of Emma being in danger continued to seize his heart.

Making a decision, Neal reached into his coat pocket and pulled out one of Regina's apples that was meant to be a treat for Geronimo and lobbed it at the presumed Jack Horner. While Neal had never missed out on a career as a major league pitcher, he had spent years in Neverland throwing rocks and other things at Pan's minions, so his marksmanship wasn't bad. Still, he was surprised when the apple struck its target square in the back of the head - and that it was hard enough to drop the guy to the ground.

There was no time to celebrate that, though, and Neal turned the old city horse in the opposite direction, presuming Horner wouldn't be running back toward the scene of his crime. It took only a few minutes to reach the familiar trail and spot boot prints in the mud leading off in the same direction as tire treads.

Neal urged Geronimo through the woods until the sun coming through the trees glinted off metal, a trailer parked oddly without anything to pull it. At first he didn't see anyone, but then he spotted Emma's blond hair protruding from her knit cap, her brown uniform otherwise blending into the heaps of pine needles and dead leaves where she lay twisted oddly on her side.

"Emma!"

Dismounting, Neal ran to her and rolled her onto her back, feeling the stickiness of blood that had stained the sparse snow on the ground, seeping from a wound just bellow her ribcage, the metallic scent mixing with the ammonia of urine. Her eyes were open and for a moment he thought she was dead but her lids twitched and a gurgling sound came out of her throat.

Emma had been paralyzed.

And Neal knew enough about the case and what manticore venom did besides making for a bad party prank to worry on multiple accounts. At least she was still breathing, her heart was still beating, and the only thing staining her uniform pants was pee... which would be something to make a family joke about considering her parents' situation the other night if the situation wasn't otherwise so dire. The diluted stuff could be looked at as a bad joke. Stabbing someone with pure manticore venom, even past its potions-making expiration date, and leaving them in the middle of the woods alone was attempted murder.

"It's gonna be okay. Violet called Regina," Neal told her as he lifted her up. "I dunno if she can teleport, but I'm sure she can locate you via Henry with blood magic or something and has an antidote and an ambulance. Just keep breathing."

Carrying a woman who was basically limp as a corpse on horseback wasn't easy, but given the mud it was probably easier than trying the dirt bike. Neal could feel Emma's puffs of breath getting weaker and had never been so relieved for a sudden swirl of purple magic to appear and surround them, sucking them through space with a brief vertigo feeling and spitting them out next to a small lake.

Geronimo whinnied in startlement, but thankfully didn't throw either of them while skidding to a stop, perhaps because Regina and Henry were standing there. A medical team appeared from the hospital located adjacent to the lake with a collapsible paramedic gurney.

"Mom!" Henry gasped, hurrying forward as the nurses transferred Emma to the gurney.

"She got stabbed in the side with this," Neal reported, pulling the spine from Geronimo's saddlebag.

"There's an antidote, right?" asked Henry, worried as Emma labored to breath.

"Yes, and we're going to get it now, but it may take a few hours to prepare it. You stay with Emma. She'll need your support," Regina ordered, not that he needed to be told, taking his mother's limp hand as Whale joined the group to check Emma's vitals on the way to the ER's entrance.

Once the team and their son was out of earshot, Regina stated, walking toward the wheelchair ramp that went to the parkinglot, "I made sure Whale had mixed together a cocktail that could delay the progress of the pure toxin and its effects should it be necessary, but I was hedging my bets that it wouldn't be needed. I wasn't going to risk life and limb to retrieve an actual antidote if it was never required, or some idiot amateur potions maker accidentally stabbed _himself_. But I should have known better, I suppose. If there's an opportunity to get injured by running off halfcocked into danger, a Charming will take it. At least Anna would have had her pirate glued to her ass whether she wanted him there or not and he'd have probably taken the spine for her and I could have wished her luck before shoving her through a portal on her own..."

"I thought you couldn't create any portals," Neal asked, "until the healing spell was broken?"

"You made it here. A different sort of portal, but still a portal," Regina reminded, "which means the barrier has weakened, if only a little. Hopefully, that little is enough to unseal The Apprentice's wardrobe portal. It's a stable, self-contained portal already echanted with direct access to our world. It's unlikely it could be utilized presently to reach any other realms it's tangentially enchanted to access, but we should be able to reach the direct opposing portal in The Enchanted Forest, which according to that creepy glowing globe sphere my mother stole from your father, isn't far from Lake Nostos. It probably uses some underground aquifer to keep it anchored there."

"Which is near the Dark Castle," Neal recalled. "You think my father has an antidote there?"

"If he had it, it would be good and well spoiled by now," Regina shook her head. "But that's about a half a day's ride from where the antidote can be found."

"Does Emma have a day?" Neal asked, worried and Regina grimaced.

"Perhaps if Whale ends up putting her on a ventilator. The baby? Unlikely. But we won't be riding."

Neal blinked. "We?"

"You're going to sit by her bedside being useless?"

"Being at Emma's side isn't useless," Neal argued angrily. "She could lose the baby. I wasn't there for anything when she was pregnant with Henry-"

"And she has Henry to play supportive family _and_ stay out of danger himself if there's no one else to do it," Regina cut him off, "instead of running off trying to play hero while pretending to use the bathroom because he feels guilty for being upset with Emma for getting pregnant and thinks she'd rather have you there at her bedside. You may have sired that boy, and Emma might have given him more hugs in a year than I did in ten, but I did raise Henry and I know how he thinks, and how he thinks is a mix of your father's guilt complex and low self-esteem loner tendencies and his other grandparents' reckless stupidity fueled by good intentions. If he isn't given a singular task he believes will help Emma, then he'll go looking for one and get himself killed.

"And, besides," she concluded, "even if you're probably worse with a sword than Charming in his current vertigo-afflicted state, I also have found that true love magic with Charmings can provide unexpected assistance."

"I'm not a Charming," Neal pointed out beside Regina's Mercedes. "True love hasn't exactly done much assisting where my father is concerned and I'm not sure my mother was ever capable of it."

"Snow White isn't technically a 'Charming', is she?" Regina countered. "Don't get self-defeatist relying on the patriarchy and her parents' less than generous opinion of your place in their family. Emma considers you family. Together you produced a child with a particularly magical heart in a world with very little magic. That should matter more than your in-law's hatred of your father and hypocritical judgment for abandoning their daughter on the disingenuous promise of the son of their blindly trusted, duplicitous ally. Try not to let them get to you. They think everyone's but their own shit stinks."

"Thanks... I think," Neal replied as Regina opened the trunk. "What do you need me to do?"

She pulled out a rolled up carpet and replied as she handed it over, "Hold onto this. And try not to get yourself killed before you're a useful distraction."

Before Neal could comment on the carpet or the implied insult, they were whisked away in a puff of purple magical smoke.

* * *

 **AN** : Poor Emma just can't catch a break. On the matter of Jefferson's hat, WTF in the Season 6 finale? His hat was BURNED TO ASHES in the second season and people were desperate ever since to find portals but suddenly two years later the dude has "his hat"? Even if his failure to replicate the hat was only due to lack of magic in Season 1, why did it take him so long to make another one that they had to come up will all kinds of other portal bullshit from Season 2-6? Fucktard, writers! And wasn't it heavily implied that Jefferson's mental state was directly related to too much realm-jumping, which was the reason he "hung up his hat" and really didn't want to take another trip for Regina... which resulted in him going insane so if he had Grace back and had been schooled that FTL was full of ogres and no place to raise a kid, WHY WOULD HE EVEN MAKE ANOTHER HAT AND DRIVE HIMSELF EVEN MADDER? Plus, wouldn't that mean Season 7 Adult Emo Douche Henry, if he spends a decade or whatever jumping from Enchanted Forest to Enchanted Forest, will one day go bonkers like Jefferson? I kind of hope it does; if Henry willingly reduced his story to abandoning his family for years without even popping back in for holidays to write down other people's stories, he's just as reckless and stupid as Jefferson was when he worked for Rumplestiltskin and didn't care about the people hurt. Sure, I'd rather be shitting in the magical woods than living under the same roof as CS, but he didn't even mirror call Regina? Not cool!

 **Next up** : Has anyone ever said "I really want a Neal/Regina bromance adventure!"? No. But you're going to get one anyway!


	21. Sphinger Things

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Update Note: Apologies for the long wait for this chapter and apologists in advance for any errors herein as well as my attempt at putting words in the mouths of monsters that makes Hagrid's dialogue in** _ **Harry Potter**_ **seem articulate. I have been editing this chapter on and off for weeks and I just got** _ **fucking tired**_ **of rereading it.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE**

 **SPHINGER THINGS**

"Mothers for miles around worried about Zuckerman's swing. They feared some child would fall off. But no child ever did. Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will."

E.B. White, _Charlotte's Web_

Wires and tubes surrounded Emma like tentacles as Henry set the eyedropper down on the night stand and retook his seat as his mother's bedside. Whale said he had to put eyedrops in her eyes every ten minutes to keep them from drying out and assured Henry that she was conscious, her muscles were just almost completely paralyzed. There were medications that could slow the toxin from stopping her lungs and heart and shutting down her other organ systems for awhile, but because it was magic - he looked quite annoyed at this - they needed a magical anti-venom, otherwise, like Dreamshade without special Neverland water, it would eventually succeed in doing what it was designed to do.

But before then, it might succeed in doing what one of the nurses and former Enchanted Forest high end brothel madam said was used to cause miscarriages when wealthy clientele needed to avoid any bastard problems when the usual attempts at pregnancy prevention failed. Henry didn't really want to know what medieval times prostitutes used as birth control any more than he wanted to know about their magical abortions. But he did want to know why everyone who worked at the hospital seemed to be kind of an asshole - though that probably wasn't a question to investigate at this exact moment.

Instead, he adjusted Emma's blankets and squeezed her hand, letting her know he was there even if he wasn't in her line of sight. A view of the ceiling tiles was probably pretty crappy, but the view probably wasn't the biggest issue on his mom's mind right now. She could die and even if she didn't, she could lose his brother or sister, and all because his crazy ex-girlfriend stole some poison for some loser sex offender so she could get revenge on the bigot parents of a girl she liked and somehow Gretel accidentally slipped the magical cocktail into his grandparents' drinks by accident. And it probably hadn't helped that his mom was distracted because he'd been a jerk that morning and didn't return her calls or texts.

"It's going to be okay, Mom," Henry tried to sound reassuring and actually believe that it would be. He had the Heart of the Truest Believer, so maybe if he believed hard enough it would be. "Dr. Whale said the medicine will work until you can get the antidote. You just have to hang in there and I know Mom and Dad will get back in time." That sounded weird. Mom and Dad... and Mom. He'd tried the Mom and Mama thing once or twice, but then he lost his memories and Emma became 'Mom' for a year and it was just... complicated.

Swallowing thickly, Henry moved forward, fighting tears. "I'm so sorry I ditched your calls, Mom. I was mad, but... I'm not anymore. I... maybe I never really was. I'm more mad at myself. I mean... when I brought you to Storybrooke I pressured you into being 'The Savior' so you felt like you had to be someone you weren't to make me proud, to have a reason to stay other than just being my mom. And maybe if I hadn't made you feel that way you could have been more honest, you could have just been yourself... and then everyone would have known when you weren't _you_ after Zelena's spell. Then your life wouldn't have gotten so messed up and the Sheriff's Department wouldn't be either with potions-brewing perverts going around poisoning people and you getting stabbed."

Henry let out a sigh and shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I'm not mad anymore. I just want you to be okay and happy... in a not slutty deadbeat kind of way," he amended. "Just hang in their," he repeated, "and fight the poison. If anyone can do it, you can. Not because you're the Savior. Because you're the strongest person I know."

Emma couldn't respond with words or even blink anymore, but tears slipped free from her eyes.

* * *

"So... you just leave a portal sitting around unguarded?" Neal asked after Regina unlocked the door to the old mansion that sat vacant and filled with cobwebs now after years of disuse... or maybe they were left behind by past Gideon's pet spider.

"Of course not," Regina huffed while adjusting a fur-lined cap.

She'd already transfigured their clothing into something more suited to a winter hike in The Enchanted Forest. Even if they encountered poachers, the appearance of The Evil Queen in a fancy ballgown probably wasn't going to help them avoid a confrontation, and it certainly wasn't going to help against magical creatures hell-bent on killing them, so Regina was all for keeping her tits warm and her feet bunion-free, even if her preferred fairytale attire was never going to be leather corset vests and britches.

"Only Emma can open it," she explained. "That or her tears. I just happen to have recruited Granny to save Emma's napkins whenever she shows up and gets weepy, which given the perfect storm of hormones and family drama at present happens to be quite often."

Neal's brows furrowed as glanced around the mansion's swanky but damaged interior. "That doesn't seem like a great security system then. Obviously, my grandmother figured it out. Although, if Emma was actually Anna, how did that even work? I mean, that wasn't _Emma_ crying over her deadbeat boyfriend."

"Perhaps she was crying inside over Anna crying over her deadbeat boyfriend," shrugged Regina while unlocking heavy double interior doors. "I try not to think too hard about the duality of Emma and her sister and when savior things applied or only appeared to apply because we were being pranked by the gods."

"Saves a headache, I guess," agreed Neal.

"Which time without in this family is hard to come by."

Regina lead the way through the empty ballroom where Gold had once plotted to suck Emma/Anna into a crazy hat until that super closeted gay queen from Arendelle and Emma/Anna magic finger-banged... as was Regina's personal interpretation based on the dreamcatcher memory the non-blue-festooned blonde shared after her post-finger-coitel fireworks. Regina suspected it was Emma, not Anna, who was a tad bicurious, and that the later was actually a tad homophobic and had subconsciously fought her sister's attraction by going full-on misogynist bimbo banging the biggest cliché manly man sexist pig she could find... who also just happened to be the only one relentlessly sexually harassing her.

Whatever Regina thought of Emma and her obvious insecurities and hypocrisies - everyone had a few - the actual Savior lied to herself significantly less than her sister and lied to others for more compassionate than selfish or lazy reasons. Perhaps Regina had felt drawn to forge a friendship with Anna not because of the post-Neverland/Pan's Curse/Zelena mess burying any hatchets between them, but because Anna consistently made bad and selfish decisions that in juxtaposition made Regina look and feel far better about herself and her attempt at redemption. Everyone, she supposed, had that friend (anyone who had friends, at least) they kept around not because they had much in common or got along particularly well, but because that other person made you feel better about yourself... like watching _Jerry Springer_ made Regina feel better about her fucked up family problems.

Which maybe didn't say much for her friendship with Anna the past few years, though Regina couldn't say the other woman was ever genuine about it outside of crazy magical situations when they were fighting some crazy enemy in tandem with Anna encouraging her to define herself by needing Robin in her life. Yes, that woman had problems, though whether that stemmed from her being cursed and unable to view herself as more than a place for a pirate to keep his dick warm or some childhood trauma that Emma had recovered from but she had not...

"And who exactly knows how to access this thing?" Neal pulled Regina from her thoughts as they reached the library with the wardrobe.

"No one outside of the family and Granny. And even within the family, I never told my sister," Regina amended and wiped a tearstained napkin around the sides of the wardrobe's door. A glow appeared and the lock clicked open.

"Age before beauty," she quipped, holding open the door.

Neal gave her a smirking look before stepping through.

They emerged in a cave with ruins drawn on the walls with some magical substance that glittered in moonlight streaming through holes in the ceiling. Of course, one problem with travel between Storybrooke and the continent of Misthaven was roughly at 12 hour time difference, give or take. Regina pulled flashlights out of her satchel.

"I guess I should find it comforting that you don't trust the lunatic who murdered me," Neal remarked, turning his on.

Regina shook her head. "Oh, it didn't have much to do with you. I wasn't going to risk Zelena deciding to head to another world to try getting her magic back with some crazy method that put the entire town in danger. I knew she would get bored with not having it eventually and look for the easiest solution without thinking of the consequences for anyone else. If she was just putting herself in danger brewing things in her storm cellar or making deals with shady unregistered alchemists in that forest camp, that I could live with. I wasn't thrilled with the end result of her succeeding at the later, but thankfully her second 'wicked' reign was short-lived. Hopefully, she'll abide by her 'sacrifice' this time around. And also not go my route of nefariously adopting a child as a quick-fix to happiness given it's horrible enough her own she got by raping a man after murdering his wife," she concluded as they emerged into a thick forest of fir trees, the night sky glittering far above the canopy. A full moon did help.

"Definitely woulda been grounds for being sentenced to Tartarus," Neal considered. "The being an 'Evil Twin' thing's not a get outta jail free card. Hades was only delaying James sentencing to mess with David. Not guilty by reason of insanity never seemed to be an option in The Underworld."

"The gods were never known for nuance view of justice," Regina agreed as she used the old magical compass Emma had gotten from Anton years ago to discern the direction they should go. "And I can't say I'm not on the fence about my sister. Some days I do feel sorry for her. It's not her fault that her father was an Evil Twin who spawned her by essentially raping our mother and she didn't know for most of her life. I don't think Whale or Hopper even told her right away, after making the preliminary diagnosis early in her pregnancy, given her psychotic behavior."

"And other days?"

Regina sighed. "I remember that she raped and was responsible for the death of the man I loved, all to spite me over some delusional misinterpretation of my relationship with our magically abusive, heartless mother, named the child she conceived after him at his funeral in a move even more tasteless than The Charmings naming their son after you, and then she habitually carried Robin around in the same cheap pink blanket blathering on 'String Bean' this and 'String Bean' that because of her psychotic obsession with the color green. On those days I want to lock her back up under the hospital. But it does seem that medication can treat some of the psychosis better now that she doesn't have magic. She's at least less obsessed with appletinis, so that's something, I suppose."

"Less comforting that 'she killed my son's father' doesn't rank on your list of reasons of to be pissed at her," Neal grouched, pushing branches aside as they stepped onto a path.

"Well, to be fair, I barely know you," Regina shrugged. "And I killed my own father, my son's great grandfather, and tried to kill his grandparents and birth mother. It would be slightly hypocritical of me to judge Zelena on that particular crime."

"Yeah, you'd think at the very least, by now, someone would have gotten you on the regicide thing," Neal mused. "What's the punishment for that these days? Drawing and quartering? Hanging? Breaking at the wheel?"

"Beheading generally."

"Huh. Seems kinda ordinary."

"I always preferred burning at the stake," Regina replied, then advised, "There should be a passage through the coastal mountains just up ahead. We'll be able to use the carpet from there to get to the coast. I don't want to expend the magic to fly any higher than necessary and end up falling short and literally into kraken-infested water on the way back. Hopefully, we can make it back by daybreak."

"You've been here before, I take it," Neal surmised, amending, "to Midas' hunting grounds."

"Not by invitation," Regina scoffed. "Snow White's father never took me anywhere, certainly not hunting. Maleficent introduced me to various magical beasts, however, that one could only get close to in the company of a shape-shifting sorceress with a talent for impersonating magical creatures."

"Who you'd rather have along for a magic carpet ride than the non-magical son of Rumplestiltskin," Neal stated while adjusting the carpet over his shoulder.

"Well, better the non-magical one than the one in diapers," Regina pointed out. "Maleficent didn't return to Storybrooke. She took Cruella's payoff from your father to finance a round-the-world trip with her daughter to deprogram Lily of a life of revenge-plotting thanks to that nutjob rogue wizard."

"Who did provide a portal here, so there's that at least," shrugged Neal.

"Yes, well," Regina continued, "I'd rather go without Maleficent's help now than have a novice sorceress rampaging through town in dragon form because she got stuck in arrested development robbing convenience stores with a lack of good potential and a deadbeat boyfriend at fourteen... rather than a slightly more mature seventeen with a parasitic evil twin and a _dumbass_ boyfriend."

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm just stating what everyone has been thinking," shrugged Regina as they started down a forest path. "Or thought for the brief moment they knew you and pretended to care at your funeral because Emma's identity-confused sister had to pretend to care for the sake of her son who didn't remember you. You didn't leave a big impression other than being stupid enough to trust Pinocchio with twenty grand and anyone's welfare. Which, all things considered, is a better impression than any Hook has made. But after getting hoodwinked by my sister after getting hoodwinked by your grandfather's minion after getting hoodwinked by the aforementioned puppet-"

"Yeah, I get it," Neal sighed. "People think I'm a gullible doofus and my mother really must have banged the town idiot while my father was on the font, because two overly-intelligent conniving assholes couldn't have had a damn fool for a kid."

"To be fair," Regina remarked, "Emma's parents are damn fools and they managed to pop out at least one child with more intelligence than the two of them combined. Emma got the brains, Anna got the hypocrisy, so I can only assume your namesake," she crinkled her nose, "got the disgustingly over-hyped optimism."

"Aw, Emma's brother's a cutie," Neal argued. "I mean, sure, he screams at the top of his lungs and shoves stuff up his nose, and he did bite Henry, but he seems like a happy kid, and he clearly adores Emma. The whole 'Emmy-Tarts' thing is _adorable_."

"Because he thought Anna was Emma and she only ever interacted with him by giving him Pop-Tarts," Regina explained. "The kid's been starved for attention and psychologically damaged."

"Which you'd know from personal experience on both sides," Neal quipped.

Regina threw him an annoyed look in his flashlight beam, but conceded, "Perhaps. Which made the way Henry's birth mother came to treat people troubling, but beyond my ability to change. My efforts to dissuade her from her obsession with the scum of the sea and put Henry first were undermined at every turn by her parents' efforts to make a wedding their blanket pardon for all the ways they failed their daughter. So expect lots of commitment hint dropping and wedding magazines showing up in the mailbox and the two of them playing good cop/bad cop in a weird passive-aggressive grudge match to get you and their firstborn to the alter."

"Good to know," sighed Neal.

"Oh, don't worry. Charming's bark is worse than his bite. And while Anna might capitulate to her parents starry-eyed hopes and dreams, I wouldn't put punching either of them in the face past Emma if they pull the same bullshit with her."

"Yeah, I kinda think Emma's mostly anti-marriage just to spite them," Neal considered.

"Well, her sister's wedding was the definition of a farce. It would put anyone off the idea of marriage, particularly anyone who'd be required to have Snow and Charming plan it by familial association," Regina scoffed.

"For them, it's always been about fixing Emma's broken-ness to absolve themselves of being partially responsible for the life that broke her," she explained. "It just turned out they were trying to fix her twin sister and utterly failed because all of her actions and reactions are influenced by a curse that demands she best her sister in the most selfish and spiteful way possible. So now they've got that much more guilt to try and absolve themselves of without actually facing it. Which I do know a thing or two about."

"Yeah, you're trying, at least," offered Neal. "Given my previous occupation, I've gotten pretty good at telling the people who're actually trying to cleanse the darkness from their hearts and the ones that are bullshitting... either themselves or others. My father's still digging himself out of a pile, but he's not exactly got an even playing field with the Dark One curse. You seem to have figured out that there's more to it than just doing whatever makes your emotionally and psychologically screwed up kid think you're not a villain."

"He's your emotionally and psychologically screwed up kid too," Regina pointed out. "And it started when you abandoned his birth mother."

Neal smirked at that. "See? Just including me as one of Henry's parents instead of calling me a statuary rapist sperm donor means you're making progress."

Wincing, Regina returned, "I apologize for that comment. Your crazy fiancée and her creepy fake food critic lover had me on edge while I was trying to figure out how to grieve the death of my habitually abusive mother who borrowed my phone and used up my month's data asking Siri, which she thought was a demon trapped inside the phone, the most efficient ways to kill people without magic. You caught me in a particularly bad couple of weeks.

"At the very least, I would have looked up Oregon state law and accurately identified your crime as misdemeanor sexual abuse and made some clever quip about the eleven months you should have been serving for that," she stated, "and what Pinocchio was doing with your additional fine, which I assume would have involved paying a Thai hooker to shoot ping-pong balls out of her vagina while rubbing lemurs on his cock."

"Sounds plausible," Neal agreed, amending, "but it's not a crime if both parties are seventeen."

"Tell that to the state of Oregon, particularly when one party has a well-established adult identity," Regina countered. "I did look you up, you know, the moment you came to town. Whatever age you might actually be, according to the Social Security Administration, you are your old wanted poster. And the gray hairs aren't helping counter that."

Neal ran a hand through his hair and argued, "Hey, kids pay a heavy price for leaving Neverland. You put off growing up, whether it was your idea or not, and it gets you back on the back end."

Regina grimaced and conceded, "Henry was only there for a week, but even leaving Storybrooke directly after Neverland, he hit puberty within a month according to Emma."

"That's how it goes," Neal shrugged. "One day I was my fourteen year old self, a lanky kid growing into my nose with a cracking voice and just sprouting pubes, and the next I looked like a grown-ass man. Literally woke up, looked at my reflection in some store window one day and didn't recognize myself."

"That sounds... unpleasant."

"Well, I didn't have to run from DCFS anymore," Neal answered, "but considering I knew very little about the world I'd arrive in on top of mentally and emotionally still being a kid, people thought I was slow or had messed myself up on drugs. No one gave me a chance to do more than bus tables or clean toilets until I was just desperate and demoralized enough to steal those watches. If I couldn't earn respect or even someone's attention as a worthwhile human being, then I figured I'd find a way to buy it. Didn't work out like I'd planned."

"You can't buy respect. You can't gain it with fear either, not the kind that's lasting, anyway, from people you'd want it from. I tried both and it took me far too long to figure that out," Regina told him. "I just want to ensure Henry doesn't take as long as I did to learn all of those important lessons. Or to have to grow up before he should, have expectations and be stuck in a life he doesn't really want because he didn't yet have the wisdom to escape it - or not fall into it in the first place. Losing a year or two to Neverland's magical fuckery hasn't helped with that. And I haven't been able to find a way to stop it from accelerating."

"Believe me, I'd love it if there was a way," Neal nodded, "but sometimes the universe just fucks you over and you have to accept that it is what it is and make the best of it."

Frowning, Regina conceded, "Perhaps. Emma's parents thought that if they introduced her to all the things she would have had in the life as a princess, then she would somehow... metamorphosize into that princess. And Anna's transformation, before they knew she existed in Emma's place, was heir vindication. Which now leaves them with two options: either try the same thing again with Emma expecting genuine results and just deepen the rift they've created or face the fact that it was a stupid and selfish idea in the first place and that their little dream could-have-been princess is only ever going to be that."

With a shake of her head, Regina considered, "It's not something Snow is particularly good at. It was her idea to try splitting myself in two based on the belief that if I purged myself of my darkness it would be like erasing all the things I'd done, how that changed me, and restore me to some former innocent version of myself. But that didn't happen and in the end, by choice, and later by circumstance, I had to take back everything that I became. I had to accept, though I already knew it, that the girl I was at eighteen died in that stable. And Snow and Charming, they have to accept that the daughter they're so desperate to regain died in that wardrobe. Which, probably, would require getting angry for more than five seconds... something they don't seem to think heroes are allowed to do," she concluded with a role of her eyes.

"To be fair," Neal reminded, "when people around here get angry over someone ruining their life, it usually leads to a body count if they're angry for more than five seconds."

"Yes, well, trying to kill me might do them some good," she snorted. "They've proven themselves time and again too incompetent to succeed at it. And if anything, that little potions incident proved they have a lot of pent-up violence that needed to get out. Archie may be a crap therapist who I'm reticent to divulge anything personal to after he blabbed my business around town, but he was right about that. It's not healthy to carry around anger all the time -and it's going to screw things up whether you're expressing it by crushing hearts or subverting it under a desperate plan to force your idea of a happy ending on others. And sometimes those two are actually the same thing," she mused.

"Well, I'm cool with Emma's parents venting instead of being creepily cheerful and forgiving all the time," said Neal, "just as long as I don't have to duel her dad. Or go on her mom's version of a high school prom after party date. My Danny Zucko impression's not that good. And the closest thing I've got to Grease Lightning is a demented Crown Vic currently trapped in Emma's garage."

"And unlike her sister," Regina amended with a smirk, "Emma's unlikely to swoon over her date unapologetically lamenting being unable to get her piss drunk to more easily get her to put out."

"Nice. I stopped watching when Hook showed up at the apartment with two hands to better cop a feel and a rose like a somehow even worse than the actual show episode of _The Bachelor_."

"I might have used a mirror to take an occasional peek... or watch the whole thing on my couch with a bowl of popcorn hoping against hope that Emma would turn out not to be the dumb blonde she seemed to have become thanks to love. Which didn't particularly ingratiate me to the notion of falling in love again myself."

"It tends to bring out the stupid," Neal agreed. "As does running away from it. You can't win, really."

Regina snorted in agreement as they came upon the passage, an old and narrow trail cut between walls of granite, probably long ago by Dwarfs.

"This looks... ominous," Neal commented.

"It's only about a quarter of a mile," Regina replied, "But there may be mountain trolls."

"I'll do the talking and you throw fireballs at them?"

"I was going to say I'll do the talking _and_ throwing fireballs at them."

"Great, so I'm just a pack mule then," Neal quipped.

"No, you're also bait."

"We seriously can't just fly there? Or _teleport there_?"

"I told you, the carpet has limited magic. And any magic will trigger the security wards. The closer we can get before using it, the better chance we have of making it to the island. Which means the better chance we have of saving your true love and unborn child and thus reducing the chances of Henry growing up to be a prematurely aged. realm-jumping cousin-fucker."

* * *

They managed to escape being dismembered by trolls, but only because Neal had what he thought was the bright idea (and Regina screamed at him afterward) to toss the carpet over the side of the path and shove them both after it. Probably they lost some magic, but they were alive and despite Regina's claim that she was handling it and they would have been fine, Neal wasn't entirely sure that 'handling' didn't mean leaving him behind as collateral.

After exiting the pass, Regina flew the carpet low toward a beach that gave way to a deep sound and a relatively close cluster of islands no doubt cut by glaciers thousands of years ago - unless Zeus had carved it himself back in the days the gods spent more time visiting mortal realms. It was a more temperate local than one would consider for King Midas based on the Land Without Magic mythology that was tied to the Mediterranean... probably because Homer was one of the earliest Authors so when he wanted to capitalize on his secret job to make a living in the world he came from, he set the stories in Greece.

"We'll have to go on foot again after we get past the wards," Regina stated as followed the shoreline, calculating the best approach angle to slip through the wards. "We've a better chance at escaping hunting manticore on the ground than in the sky. I'm sure we won't be the first interlopers using a flying carpet, and they're far more intelligent than the chimera and sphinx. And not as solitary. They'll pack hunt if needed against a perceived threat. Easier to work our way past the former on foot, try to track and sneak up on a manticore."

"You can't say Midas didn't make his hunting trips challenging," Neal mused, hanging on tight to the frayed tassels.

"That or he just wanted to make a Blast-ended Skrewet," shrugged Regina, earning a surprised and bemused look from Neal. "What? Henry read the books. Emma read the books. I got tired of not understanding their jokes," she retorted.

Neal smirked and remarked, "I think that was basically the gods' motivation for making these beasties. Like, why not mate two completely unrelated species to make something totally freakish that no one would want just because. Well, that and the Titans, I think, just liked taking animal forms and orgy fucking like a Furry convention, then having their mutant kids mate with the creepy kids of their friends. And then eventually, it just devolved to a quasi-bestiality with their grandkids or great grandkids straight-up banging regular animals and when those poor critters got knocked up, their progeny weren't as sentient or immortal and couldn't shapeshift back into a human-ish form, so they juts became weird, angry animals for humans to fear or hunt in magical world caveman days. Really, Titans were kinda sickos and I'd almost side with Zeus for over-throwing 'em if the jerk and his siblings hadn't gone straight to raping farm girls and fucking their livestock to create another generation of goat-boys, horse-men, and bird-women."

"It does seem like the gods and goddess will screw anything with vaguely compatible genitalia," Regina agreed. "Ironic then that all their bestiality resulted in a bunch of mostly sterile hybrid freak creatures that require special magical intervention to reproduce. Which would be one thing if that was Midas' reason for building his preserve. I suppose it's more-or-less become a magical wildlife refuge rather than game preserve since the Dark Curse, though whether the animals will just eventually die off and go extinct with no one alchemists handy to inseminate them..."

"That's gotta be a weird-ass job," Neal snorted. "Collecting and mixing up scorpion, dragon, and cat spunk in potions and then sticking it in a manticore to make baby manticores."

"I think they use androsphinx semen, not 'cat spunk'," Regina corrected with a distasteful expression before urging the carpet over the water.

Neal frowned, "Why can't I steer the carpet?"

"Because you threw it and us over the said of a mountain!"

Neal sighed and held on as the wind over the water started to buffet them. The carpet really was either badly enchanted or the enchantments were wearing off. Which didn't bode well for them when half way to the island large, dark splotches began lifting up out of the island's canopy like giant bats emerging from a cave. But they weren't giant bats, they just had large bat-like wings to go with their barbed tails, glittering talons, and reptilian heads.

"Are those-"

"Wyverns," Regina nodded.

"You didn't say anything about wyverns!"

"There wasn't a colony of them here when I visited!"

"When was that?"

"I don't know... I'd just killed Snow's favorite pony because she was being a spoiled brat..."

"So like... fifty years ago!?"

"Probably more like forty! Not the point!" Regina hissed as the wyverns maneuvered in a pattern that suggested they were as trapped on the island as the creatures she'd seen on her previous visit, so they wouldn't have to worry about them until they got closer... but the wyverns were congregating just where they needed to slip through the wards on their old carpet that was less the enchanted tapestry equivalent of a Formula One race car and more like an early Ford Pinto with 300,000 miles on it that might stall and explode at any moment.

"Can't you just blast through them?" Neal asked.

"Maybe if this carpet wasn't a moth-holed piece of shit!" Regina replied. "We're lucky we didn't go splat at the bottom of that ravine! Besides, have you tried throwing magic at a dragon? Even a pint-sized one? It's generally not very effective! Why do you think kings contract knights with swords instead of wizards with spells to kill them? Unless Maleficent was feeling frisky, that wasn't really an option!"

Neal hadn't actually thought about that since dragons weren't a big issue in The Frontlands, but it was true. "Yeah, well, they're gonna tear us to pieces!" he pointed out the obvious. "Where did you get this thing? A genie's garage sale!?"

"Yes, actually!"

"That's like buying a Rolex out of the back of some dude's van in Queens! You got scammed, Regina!"

"And the genie paid heavily for i-SHIT!" Regina interrupted herself as the lead wyvern suddenly let out a blast of fire in their direction that had no problem getting through the wards even if the tiny dragon couldn't. "Of course, Midas collected the one species of wyvern that can breath fire!" she growled. "I am so gonna kick that old clearly micro-penis-having king's ass if I don't die today!"

Another wyvern let out a blast of fire that singed the carpet's tail tassels.

"Go lower!" Neal advised.

"What!?"

"You said the water's infested with kraken! These waters are deep right up the shore and kraken don't repel magic or breath fire, do they?"

Regina glanced at him, frowning.

"What? You gotta a better idea?"

"No. Damn it! I hate that you're making sense. Even if it's a completely reckless idea with a high chance of failure! Hold on!"

"What do you think I've been doing!?"

Regina rolled her eyes before taking the carpet into a dive about as pretty as their plummet off the side of the mountain. She did manage to pull up and level out about ten feet above the water, just high enough to avoid the choppy waves but low enough that the enchanted tapestry caused a wake.

The flock of wyvern pursued, continuing to spit fire, but sure enough, moments after one's attack hit the water, throwing upwards a blast of steam, a kraken breached the surface, the massive aquatic reptile leaping up, scales glittering in the moonlight, and snatching the distracted flying one, dragging it back down into the drink with a spray of blood and bubbling shrieks - which caused the rest of the flock to climb to an altitude well above the carpet leaving Neal and Regina beyond the reach of their fire... but now within reach of the hungry kraken.

They were almost to the shore when it breached in front of them, rows of jagged teeth ready to clamp down and rip more than their tattered carpet to shreds. Regina threw a ball of fire at it, the result it flinching away - and the carpet lurching badly, nearly throwing them into the water. Undeterred, the serpentine water beast swam after them right up into the shallows where they met the resistance of Midas' wards and were pitched forward, tumbling into a tide pool with a painful splash well within reach of the kraken.

Neal had just lifted his face out of a pile of kelp in time to see it baring down while Regina struggled to pull her arms outstretched to break her fall from the thick, muddy sand to fend it off.

They were surely about to die a grizzly death - but then the water just beyond the shore exploded with sea foam and another, larger reptilian head shot up and chomped down on the kraken's exposed body, lifting and dragging it back toward the deep even as a second - and third - head stretched high into the air to gobble up several wyverns in a single bite.

Neal and Regina stared for several moments before the former Evil Queen remarked, "Looks like Midas found himself a hydra too. Perhaps I'll rethink turning him into a slug."

"Yeah, for now," Neal agreed, glancing over at the magic carpet weirdly inching out of a tide pool like a large flat worm.

Once on the gravely beach, the carpet levitated several inches off the ground, twisted itself up, and rapidly unfurled, spaying them with water, mud, bits of sea grass, and tiny clams that hurt like a bitch before rolling itself up neatly on a piece of drift wood.

Picking himself up, Neal questioned, "Are you sure that genie didn't get the last laugh?"

Regina threw him a glare while pulling a hermit crab out of her cleavage , replying, "Anyone ever tell you that you have a terrible sense of humor?"

"I have been told it's an acquired taste," Neal conceded.

"To put it mildly," she huffed before reaching into the charmed satchel she was carrying to pull out Charming's sword that she'd taken from the evidence room at the Sheriff's Station. "Think you can hold this without chopping off something vital, Prince Tactless?"

Neal threw her a glare. "Hold up, you had that with you the hole time? Why the hell didn't you give it to me earlier!"

"Because you might have dropped it over the side of a mountain or into a thousand foot deep fjord," Regina snapped in return, "and it's enchanted metal. I could summon it back _to Charming_ , but he's a world away, so magic wouldn't work to retrieve it. Now come on, we have chimera to run from and sphinxes to outwit."

"It's sphinges, actually," Neal corrected. "And don't ask me how I know that."

"I don't have to. Too much time bonding with your stepmother before dying," Regina grouched while pulling two large flashlights from her bag. "The answer is almost always Belle, at Granny's, blathering on loudly to some stranger about a completely useless topic while you are just trying to drink your coffee and read the paper," she concluded and gestured with her light. "This way."

Leaving the carpet, Neal followed into the forest.

"You know," Regina commented after finding what looked like a path, "I think I actually see why Emma likes you. You're both insufferable idiots."

"I prefer occasional optimists," Neal argued. "I like to think of myself as a glass half full kind of guy. Especially if the glass is half full of bourbon. I know, bad sense of humor," he amended. "But I'd probably have drunk a lot more of it after leaving Emma if hadn't given all of my money to Pinocchio."

"Not the best move you ever made," Regina confirmed.

Neal grimaced. "Deep down I knew it, but I couldn't force myself to admit it, to go back on the deal I made and risk that I was screwing up some well-oiled plan. Whenever I got close to people, they ended up getting hurt because I was my father's son."

"At least it was only by unwarranted reputation. I was very much my mother's daughter," said Regina. "Better to be a magnet for evil than to be evil."

"Tell that to Emma's parents," snorted Neal. "They picked the evil guy over the evil magnet guy, sent Hook off on good terms to be some chaste hero pining for their daughter while I didn't even get a horse."

"Still bitter about that."

"A little bit, yeah."

"They chose the man their daughter was shamelessly flirting with at the town line," Regina shrugged. "They just didn't know they had two daughters at the time sharing one physical form and that the particular magic of Neverland had given the slutty one considerably more control when the not slutty one was an emotional basketcase. Which doesn't excuse the matter of Hook being your child-abuse condoning and brother orphaning stepfather who couched trying to get in their daughter's pants with a half-assed attempt to rescue their grandchild that he saw otherwise as an obstacle to the next phase in his MILF and Gold family cuckolding fetish. But then I think we've already covered several times that Snow White and Prince Charming are hypocrites with poor judgment and terrible parenting skills thanks to being screwed up by their own parents."

"Who isn't in this family?" quipped Neal.

"Sadly true," Regina agreed. "Just don't pay them much mind, whether it's Snow's overly saccharine attempts to get to know you in lieu of apology or David's chauvinistic 'if you hurt my daughter' garbage that would be a lot less insulting if he hadn't thrown her in a box when she was five minutes old without any thought of where she'd end up with no one to keep her from starving to death or being eaten by wolves and then didn't see her again until she was twenty-eight and he was cheating on his wife, curse or no curse. They may have brought Emma into the world, but sending her to another is the only other thing they did for her, and neither warrants any of the allowances that go with being a parent."

"That the speech you gave Emma when she came to town, or did you just threaten to kill her?"

"Mostly just threatened to kill her and then tried to kill her," Regina admitted. "I was not in a good place back then."

Neal noticed some shed snake skin and fur stuck to a nearby tree and considered, "I don't think we're in a good place right now."

Not far on they discovered a still-smoldering pile of a wild boar's remains. Because, of course, chimera could also breath fire. But usually, that fire only came from the cat head part... the _one head_ part.

At first it seemed, perhaps, a trick of the moonlight through the canopy when the creature appeared, but when Neal moved his flashlight beam it revealed smoke smoldering out of a _goat head_ that came out of the chimera's back and when it whipped its serpent tail around, the tail was actually a snake head that spat sparks!

"Well, I'd say no one's taken over for Midas' game warden and nature is taking an even more freakish turn," Regina grimaced in disgust at the horribly mutated chimera.

"I'd say good on the animals for giving it a try on their own... but that ain't right," Neal agreed, then winced as the goat back-head screamed, the snake tail-head hissed, and the at least somewhat normal looking "lion" head roared... and let out a blast of fire before the mangled mess of a creature charged at them.

There was no chance of getting a swing in with David's sword. Neal might not be terrible with a blade, but his practice was with a cutlass, not a broadsword, and even if Rufio had taught him how to take down a wild boar, wild boar didn't breath fire and weren't the size of a full groan alpha male African lion.

Regina threw fireballs behind them, but most of her shots were wide. Finally, they clamored over some boulders and she was able to pry one free of the soggy soil and magically hurl it at the charging beast. The rock struck the goat head with a sickening crack of its neck and the other heads howled in agony. As it fell to the ground in pain, she pulled down a large tree branch, pinning the beast.

Neal considered putting the creature out of its misery, but there was a loud shrieking from above and several of the surviving wyverns descended and began scorching and tearing into the mortally injured chimera which continued to make nightmarish sounds as they devoured it.

"Now would be a good time to get out of here," Regina stated, grimacing at the grisly sight.

"Yeah," Neal agreed, feeling sorry for the monster even if it had tried to kill them. The gods had done some truly unnatural things.

They managed to avoid further chimera, but there was no way to reach the interior of the island without crossing one of the many bridges that Midas had installed to suit the magically ingrained need of sphinxes to guard passageways, and do so viciously if their riddles were not solved.

Even in the dark of night, somehow the creatures could sense anyone approaching and before they'd even reached the closest bridge, one of the regal-looking beasts had slinked out of its nearby den and assumed an imposing posture in their path.

"Twooo traaavelerssss," it purred at them. "Eeeach mussst solve a riiiiddle to passss."

The sphinx looked first at Regina and demanded, "There are twooo sisssters: one giiives birrrrth to the othhhher and sheeee, in turn, giiives birrrrth to the firsssst. Who are the twooo sisssters?"

Regina snorted lightly at that and replied, "As much as I'd like to say my son's birth mother and her Evil Twin sister, I'll go with day and night."

Inclining its furry head, the sphinx intoned "Youuu may passs."

It then turned to Neal and inquired, "How do youuu keeeep the one youuuu lovvve?"

"You don't," he answered without thinking about it. "Love is selfless, not possesive. If you truly love someone, you have no desire to possess them. You don't keep them."

If the sphinx was disappointed in not getting to maul anyone, the creature didn't reveal it, simply nodded again and slinked off to the side, allowing them through.

"That was anticlimactic," Neal shrugged as they carefully traversed the rickety bridge.

"Probably meant to give the nobleman Midas wanted to impress a false sense of superiority - the intelligent ones, anyway, before he had to save their nuts with his golden touch, securing whatever treaty he needed by counting on their egos being larger than their swordsmanship... or that of the loyal knights they brought along."

"Good thing I'm not a knight then," Neal joked, tightening the belt of Charming's sword around his waist.

"Just remember that manticores have weak jaws," Regina advised. "They might be able to stick your entire head in their mouth, but they can't crush it because of their large canines. So they won't go for a kill shot with their mouths."

"Great, they'll just slash us bloody with those massive teeth before stabbing and paralyzing us so they can savor every delicate bite."

"I'm not sure how much they'll savor a man who was recently a corpse," Regina quipped. "Might work in your favor if you taste like rotten meat."

"Maybe I shoulda brought Hook's rape perfume and just made them all fall in lust with me."

"Would you really want to find out what a sexually aroused manticore is like? I don't think scorpions or lions are particularly gentle lovers and I know dragons aren't."

Neal raised a brow at that. "Hold up, are you saying that you and Mal-"

"I didn't mean it like that!" Regina snapped at him, though her face flushed in the starlight.

"Then why is your face all red?"

"Just... shut up, _Baelfire_!" Regina scoffed.

Neal grinned and followed up a rocky path. His grin faded, however, when they spotted large feline tracks in the mud. Manticores were larger than both chimera and sphinx, full grown ones bigger than a Bangle Tiger, some as big as Cerberus, Hades' three-headed demon dog... and just as mean. Presumably they were bred that way since the gods liked terrifying monsters; after all, Cerberus' runty brother with a happy disposition was set up for slaughter by Hercules and sent to Tartarus with his master even though the poor three-headed mutt didn't actually do anything to warrant damnation.

The gods really sucked sometimes.

Staying quiet and walking slowly now, Regina and Neal attempted to track the manticore. They succeeded. Sort of. Instead of finding the manticore that had made the tracks, they found a dragon-like nest of pine branches, animal fur, feathers, and six sleeping manticore cubs, all of them with furry brown ears too big for their feline faces that, along with the rest of them, including their wings and twitchy scorpion tails had a faint smattering of spots. If they weren't roughly the size of leopards with sharp claws and teeth, they'd be kind of adorable. They were probably about three months old and almost weaned given their tail stingers were pretty pointing looking and the nest was surrounded by bleached bones of small animal carcasses that their mother had probably brought alive for them to practice killing.

"No dragon heads sticking out of their backs or scorpion head tails, so looks like nature hasn't completely fucked up on its own," Neal observed as the litter purred in union like an outboard motor. "They're kinda cute."

"There's six of them and just one is big enough to kill you," Regina pointed out. "Give me that sword."

"You're not killing a baby manticore!" Neal objected.

"I'm not killing any manticore. I'm just going to nick it. A juvenile's blood is strong enough to counter expired venom. Unless you really want to fight an adult?"

"Well, no, but-"

Of course as they argued, the brood woke from their slumbering, noticed the strange bipedal creatures in their clearing, and yowled loudly.

" _Shit_ ," Regina growled. "Now you've done it!"

"I didn't do anything!"

Regina snatched the sword from him and swung it at the nearest cub. She drew blood, and furry. The injured one yelped in pain and the others hissed.

They ran for the trees, but the alarm had been sounded, and manticores, of course, had far better hearing than humans. Before Regina had fully shoved Charming's sword back into its scabbard, a shadow was descending, blocking out the moon. And then a fully grown manticore landed just meters in front of them, causing the ground to shudder.

The mother roared loudly, flapping twelve feet of outstretched leathery wings and baring foot long incisors.

Which was bad.

Moments later, a second, even larger manticore with balls that would put a lion to shame joined the angry mama.

Magic might be a dominating force in The Enchanted Forest, but clearly Mother Nature had found a way... and now they had two clearly protective manticore parents growling at them, hackles raised, ears back, and tails twitching.

"Aw, hell," Neal groaned.

Death by manticore was probably one of the more gruesome ways to go. Death by being fed to baby manticores was probably the worst kind of that. Kids, after all, always played with their food.

"I'm guessing male manticores are even more vicious than female ones," Neal considered.

Please! Hell hath no furry like a mother protecting her children," Regina argued, flexing her fingers.

"Then why the hell did you stab her cub!?"

"It's just a minor flesh wound! And I told you, I'm doing this to protect Henry. I just didn't consider that _Mother Nature_ had found a way around the magic of the gods to protect the freakish products of their kinky sex lives from extinction!"

"Mother Nature always wins," Neal stated, backing up against a tree.

"Perhaps," Regina agreed, "but magic can at least provide a distraction. You said you wanted to steer that carpet..."

Neal glared. "I'm not leaving you to get mauled by manticores!"

"Then Henry is going to lose all three of his parents!"

"There's two of them. And you just gave me the sword covered in their kid's blood! Pretty sure they're not gonna just let me leave because you did the stabbing!"

There was no time for further arguing. The parents had checked on the cubs, apparently determined that the injured one was not going to die, but also determined that didn't mean all was forgiven and charged at them, covering far more ground than a chimera. Regina launched fire and rocks as they ran through the woods, trying to get back to the path that lead to the bridge.

Not that a bridge was a great escape route. Even though one of the manticores didn't pursue them beyond their nesting territory, Regina was right that the female was the more vicious one and didn't waste time taking flight, swooping ahead of them, and dive-bombing the bridge to shatter the wooden slats, destroying their path.

Regina used magic to repair the planks, just barely in time, and they ducked to avoid the manticore's deadly tail, finally stumbling off the end of the bridge as the first light began to touch the sky.

The manticore landed and roared in fury, swinging its tail again.

But the sphinx swooped in and the two giant, winged beasts circled each other, their _Avatar_ -ish featured humanoid/feline faces set into determined glares. They growled and yeowled and hissed before the sphinx spoke aloud, "Thisss placccce issss miiine."

The manticore growled back, "Youuu lettt thesssse humansss passs to harrrrm my cubsss. Youuur ridddlesss protect nottthing!"

"Youuuu diiiid not complaiiiiin when I let poachersss crossss yesssterday!" the sphinx growled. "Thesssse humansss do not seeek our dessstruction. Giiiive me no morrrre excuuusess, manticorrrre."

More growling ensured, but the manticore backed down, took flight, and returned across the ravine to its territory, leaving the sphinx to regard Neal and Regina once more, telling them, "I suuugessst you make hassste. Thissss isssland issss farrrr morrre dangerousss than it ussed to be. Both itssss inhabitantsss and thosssse who come ssseeking to take usss asss trophiessss."

"Why help us?" Regina asked.

"While the manticore ssseesss only actionsss, I ssseee intentionsss," answered the sphinx. "It doesss not mean I caaannottt lettt thossse who mean harrrrm passs, but it alssso doesss not mean I caaannottt impeed them from returrrrrning. I am not alwayssss sucesssful at that. Many of my sisssstersss and coussssinsss fall prey to the greed of humanssss. It isss good to sssee that not all of your kiiind havvvvve been losssst to darknesss."

* * *

Night was falling on Storybrooke. In a room in the hospital's ICU, Emma Swan was fighting with all her magical might to slow the toxin in blood. Like dreamshade, a black spidering had now worked its way up from the wound in her side, the tendrils peaking out from the fabric of her hospital gown on her arms and legs where Whale and the nurses came frequently to poke at her. A respirator now protruded from her mouth, the device forcing oxygen into her lungs and an EKG monitor beside the bed beeped feebly as her heart continued to beat. Beside that, a machine hooked up to the fetal monitor strapped to her abdomen also beeped and scrawled out lines on paper that the nurses collected.

Not that Emma could see any of that. Her gaze was locked, against her will, on the ceiling tiles with their little holes and water stains like a negative image of stars and nebulas, points of black and brown on a field of white. She thought of the coconut starmap that Neal had made as a boy, the navigation tool that had gotten them home after capturing Pan's Shadow and ultimately destroyed the demon in that chapel - and she'd thought destroyed along with it until Neal's funeral at the same chapel when Tinkerbell place it in his coffin after her eulogy with the touching words that she hoped it helped guide him home.

She'd thought she was finally home, in this town, with a house, with a family that was growing, however unexpected. Her relationship with her parents was still complicated and her job was frustrating. Her teenage son was both of those things. But she'd had hope that this could be her happy beginning. It wasn't a three story castle of a house served up on a magical platter along with stacks of buttermilk pancakes and an event wedding with flowers, lace, and choreographed song and dance. It was a fixer-upper with a mental car that wouldn't leave and the weirdest New Years Eve of her life: a keychain that was better than any expensive diamond rings, (almost) car sex with the man she'd thought was lost to her forever, listening to her mother lament a bad date with Thumper, and eating mediocre left over pizza at 2 AM.

It wasn't a fairytale by any definition. But it was her story, and she was sick and fucking tired of that story being filled with tragedy and loss. She wasn't going to get her true love back only for the price to be the loss of her child. She'd paid enough prices for other people's magical fuck-ups that she was damn well due for a break. But magic wasn't going to give in easily. So she fought and focused on the ceiling tiles and Henry's voice as he read his revision of her story with a mix of conviction and lamentation in his voice, that he no longer held the power to change things with the flourish of a pen.

No, change took hard work. Which was how it should be. That was the life Emma lived before breaking the Dark Curse, before Rumplestiltskin brought the magic of The Enchanted Forest to Storybrooke. It was a life of hardships and fighting and often getting knocked down. It was the story of an orphan and a criminal, an ugly duckling who didn't see her own inner beauty any more than those who abused and neglected her, who didn't begin to dream until she found someone else who was lost and abandoned and despite that dream shattering with her newborn son's cries, she'd still picked herself up out of bed every day... not always to do the right or good thing, but just to not let life beat her down for good until she had something - someone - to fight for. Her son's happiness. Her son's life. Now her second child's life was at risk of being cut short before it had even truly begun, and though she tried to wrap it in her magic, that tiny beating heart, she was so tired.

She wouldn't give up, though. Neal wouldn't let her down. Not this time. And Regina would always fight for Henry, for him to have the family he deserved even if it wasn't the one she would have chosen for him.

"...and then true love's kiss-"

"DAD!" Henry cut himself off as Neal came barreling into Emma's hospital room, nearly knocking over Dr. Whale.

"Sorry, Doc," he apologized before shoving the man away.

"What the hell are you-"

Neal pulled the bandage off Emma's chest wound and plunged the tip of her father's sword through the stitches and into the angry necrotic wound.

Henry gaped, Whale hauled him back rather violently, and then the black spidering began to fade from Emma's veins, the wound sealed up to a small scar, and the beeping on the monitors normalized.

Then Emma blinked, gagged loudly, and tried to sit up.

"DON'T MOVE!" Whale admonished angrily and pulled the respirator out of her throat and then complaining, "Damn magic!"

"The fuck, Neal!? You just stabbed me!?" Emma rasped.

"I could have removed the sealing charm," Regina stated from the doorway, and walking in with a bit of a limp took the sword from Neal, concluding, "and let it _drip_ into the wound. You really do have no finesse."

"Sorry," Neal apologized to both, sheepishly. "It worked, though. I mean, are you okay? The baby?" he asked Emma, anxious.

"We're both fine," Emma answered, still not really sure how her magic knew that when she hadn't even realized she was pregnant until a week ago, and not because her magic told her. But somehow she was aware of that tiny beating heart.. she supposed in the way her parents always seemed aware of the other being in mortal danger - even before they shared a heart. Magic connected them. True love. Or facing death together. Or both. Some kind of bonding had happened, far sooner and not in the way she'd expected, that was for sure.

Any ambivalence she'd been feeling about going through this again had disappeared hours ago. And any lingering fears about having to not screw up as an actual mother from scratch and not knowing what the hell she was doing felt inconsequential up against her relief and that little pulsing of life.

"I'll be the judge of that," Whale insisted, removing the strap of the fetal monitor and switching it out for the ultrasound machine already used numerous times during the course of the afternoon. When the wand pressed down on Emma's stomach, the little blob appeared on the screen and a whooshing sound filled the room.

Neal couldn't hold back a sob of relief and pulled Emma into a hug, much to Whale's grumbling.

Henry asked the grumpy doctor, "Hey, can you tell if it's a boy or a girl?"

"From an ultrasound now? Not definitively. But the genetic test I performed did contain two X chromosomes."

"It's a girl?" Neal discerned.

"And you didn't tell me?" Emma exclaimed.

"Well, just the healthy baby part seemed a lot for you to process," stated Whale, "and you didn't ask. Many mothers don't want to know until the baby is born."

 _Or even after_ , Emma thought, remembering Henry's birth. But she was glad she knew this time. She was carrying a healthy baby girl who had to be made of some strong stuff to fight that poison. But would she be anything else coming from this family?

"If everything's fine, can I go home?" Emma asked.

"Maybe," Whale harumphed. "After I give you a full once over, including a blood sample in the interest of _science_ to see what exactly that manticore blood is doing to the venom."

"Why don't you get me some Jell-O, Kid?" Emma directed at her son, not wanting to anger Whale any further. "I'm kinda craving the blue kind."

"Sure, Mom," Henry smiled before leaving the room.

"Thank you," Emma told Regina, who'd remained off to the side holding her father's show sheeted sword. "You didn't have to risk your life for my kid that's the size of a magic bean."

"Closer two magic beans, actually," Whale interjected. "And your 'kid' is due for a growth spurt. So start investing in elastic waistbands."

"Do you mind?" Regina huffed at his interruption.

"Oh, fine, don't mind me. I just kept her and her unborn child alive for half a day while you were fighting magical monsters. No credit for the _scientist_ , right?"

" _Thank you_ ," Regina and Emma said in unison and Whale just glowered.

Turning back to Emma, Regina told her, "You've risked your life for mine when I certainly didn't deserve it. And for Henry when I put him in danger," she reminded. "Sometimes you just have to do what's right. That's all I was doing."

"Still, thank you," Emma insisted. "I know I've been... harder on you than Anna, and-"

"And I probably deserve it," Regina cut her off. "Having your sister's and your mother's unwavering support is something I never thought I'd have and I deeply appreciate it, though considering that support has often been for utterly foolish things, it no longer seems quite as aggravating as it once did to have someone around who keeps me honest."

"That's sweet," Whale snarked, interrupting again. "Now both of you _get out while I do important medical stuff!_ "

"Clearly you're just annoyed you didn't revive him or _cure_ her with science. You need to get over your inadequacies, Doctor," Regina scoffed with a gesture at Neal, earning an even more glaring glare from Whale. She rolled her eyes and left the room.

Neal gave Emma a quick kiss.

"You really fought a manticore for me?" she asked, brows raised.

"OUT!"

"Rain check," Neal replied, sidestepping Whale before the man grabbed the scalpel off the nearby tray and tried to stab him.

* * *

Neal found Regina waiting for the elevator and walking up beside her commented, "Whale hasn't changed much from what I remember. Other than the hair."

"Presumably he had a breakdown," shrugged Regina, "but considering he tried to resurrect my dead fiancé in the hospital basement a few weeks after the original curse was broken, I'm not certain what qualities as stable for him. But the City Council agreed that an eccentric and moody actual surgeon is better than a village butcher with fake, hazy medical school memories."

"Probably true," Neal agreed and followed her into the elevator before asking, "You used it, didn't you?"

Regina turned at Neal's question and furrowed her brows in return, "What?"

"Manticore venom. That's why you were so desperate to help Emma. Not her being family through Henry," Neal proposed. "You didn't want her to go through what you did."

Regina frowned, debating before conceding, "All marriages have to be consummated. I didn't have the magical acumen then to find ways to prevent the consequences. But I don't feel guilty about it, if that's what you're thinking. Regret, perhaps, that I let myself be manipulated into a situation where a child that should never have been was conceived. And then later manipulated by that choice into destroying my fertility under the guise of motherly advice. So I did what I had to do, for myself, and for a child who would have had a life ruined as my mother destroyed mine, and possibly by my actual mother. If you think that makes me a bad person-"

"I don't," Neal told her. "If it matters at all, since I _was_ Lord of The Underworld, I do have some insight into how karma works. Sounds like you had two crap choices, you picked one. You feel bad about it, but you don't regret it. Cause you know it was the better choice at the time. So you get a pass on that one and you can stick to agonizing over the stuff like mass murder for vanity."

Frowning, Regina told him, "That was actually very... nice up until the last part."

"Well, I could tell you that your murder-happy-ness taught me the meaning of hope," Neal smirked, "but I'm not that delusional and I've got no more bullshit left after department meetings at Mt. Olympus and playing meet-and-greet for magical world dirtbags. You did get the blood that saved Emma, though. So I'll second that sphinx."

"Intentions don't always justify actions," Regina reminded. "Sometimes there are other ways. I'm not used to looking for those."

"Neither's my old man," Neal replied. "It's been a long time since he couldn't scheme and blackmail to get his way. Since he knew what it was like to be the one frightened and groveling, and I don't figure anyone who gets to the other side of that wants to remember what it was like to be that afraid and at the mercy of others."

Shaking his head, he continued, "To be honest, when I met you, I wondered if you ever had been, despite what it said in Henry's book. You seemed pretty hell bent on your mom's messed up way of doing things. I wondered if you really did love Henry. Like I wondered if my father had really loved me after he let me go.

"I mean, after the mass murder tantrums over not being as pretty as a little girl and using your selfish desire to not be alone after infertility-potioning yourself to find someone else's kid to take home and raise with no friends and then making him feel crazy after bringing Emma here _and_ the apple turnover thing... It didn't scream 'Mother of the Year'."

Neal shrugged as he concluded, "But I can see you did start to love him, even if you couldn't show it, and that does count for something. Balances out your selfish reasons for adopting him, anyway."

"Just not the mass murder for vanity?" Regina inquired and he chuffed.

"It was a step off the villain path. That's a start. And every step counts."

Regina nodded. "Fair enough. And if my opinion matters at all," she amended, clearing her throat, "Emma's insufferable parents may consider their little princess bigger, more important than you, but she doesn't want to be. You can't always choose what you are, but you can hold onto what you want to be, whether or not it's ultimately realistic or achievable. And if you remind her of that, of the fearless girl who wasn't afraid to love and believed in finding a home devoid of all the insanity and disappoints that had plagued her past... well... having the reminder can be just enough to endure the current and future ones."

Neal rubbed the back of his neck, surprised by the encouraging words. "Ah... thanks."

"Well, you didn't get us both killed. That counts or something."

* * *

"So... is the baby gonna have your last name or dad's or both?"

Emma paused in lifting her first spoonful of Jell-O. Henry been a motor mouth as a kid, even in her fake memories but had turned quiet and introverted as a teenager, so the past five minutes of 20 Questions had come as a surprise.

"I hadn't really thought about it, Henry. I've only had a couple of days to process the whole being pregnant thing."

"But I thought you got pregnant when you were in The Underworld. And that's like-"

"Besides the River Styx there's one called Denial, Kid. And you know, it not being normal to get pregnant by a dead guy," Emma told him. "I haven't been hiding this from you because I didn't want you to know. I didn't even want to admit it to myself. I didn't need another complication in my life. Apparently, that's a pattern with me."

"You weren't happy when you found out you were having me," Henry deduced with a sigh. "I mean, I figured..."

"I wasn't _unhappy_ , Henry," Emma explained. "I was young, scared, alone and heartbroken. I didn't feel like I had enough love left to give to you. I was wrong about that. But it took me a long time to realize it," she told her son with a bittersweet smile. "I'm so glad that I did. But it's also hard realizing it means my life could have been different.

"When I got my memories back and we came back here," she recalled, "I knew I was never going to write 'Henry Swan' on anything again, and even though that wouldn't change how much I loved you or knowing you loved me and that we had a good year together pretending we'd had that life, it still made it feel less real. _Impermant_."

Henry leaned forward in his chair and admitted, "I thought about asking Mom if I could add you guys' names to mine after Dad died. Like legally outside of Storybrooke, not just on school and doctor records, but I never did. All the stuff with the Dark One and Hook. I kinda wasn't so enthusiastic about 'Swan' anymore and I figured after the 'Mrs. Jones' thing you and Hook would take 'Cassidy' as an insult."

"I'm sure Anna and Hook would have, yeah," sighed Emma and she gave her son's arm a squeeze. "I'm sorry you were made to feel like that, Henry, like you couldn't be who you wanted to be without making me angry or sad. No one should have to feel that way."

"It wasn't your fault, Mom," Henry reassured. "It wasn't actually you."

"And it's not your fault that no one knew that," Emma told him. "I made those choices to be that person, to hide stuff from past that I didn't want you or other people to know, to seem like I had a more stable life than I did, made more of myself after giving you up than I did. It was my insecurity to blame, not your over-eagerness to get me to help everyone.

"You were right when we helped Ashley and you said I wasn't ready for the 'nickname' you wanted me to have. I wasn't ready to be your mom. I wasn't even sure how to just be _a_ mom. And I'm sorry that I wasn't around to be a better role model than my sister," Emma continued. "I'm sorry I couldn't find the strength to believe and to fight Zelena as I should have. I just wanted to run away and that allowed my sister to take over. And maybe I wasn't strong enough to fight her darkness either, not enough to get control back for more than a minute or two, though it's all still kind of confusing..."

"It's not your fault either, Mom," Henry returned. "You just wanted to protect me and heroes save people from getting killed by villains even if they don't like them, even if it means sacrificing their power. You didn't know that giving up your magic would mean giving up your identity. And how can you fight against something you don't know isn't yours? Or even you? You have to know what you're up against to have a chance of winning."

"I guess that's true," Emma agreed. "Hopefully that deck isn't stacked against us anymore and we've all got a better chance to get it right. I still don't know about all this Savior stuff and I'm still figuring out being Sheriff again with the hot mess your aunt was at the job. But I'm ready now to do a better job as your mom, Henry. You and your sister deserve that. No matter what names or nicknames you go by. If you want to just mash them all together, that's fine by me, Kid. You'll really be like a proper stuffy royal," she concluded as Neal reentered the room.

"What about stuffy royals?"

"I was thinking about adding yours and Mom's names to mine," Henry explained, "If you don't mind?"

Neal startled at that, having never considered Henry might want to do that. "Ah... I don't mind. I mean, it's not really my name. Legally it is, but, you know..."

Shrugging, Henry replied, "Neither are 'Mills' or 'Swan'. We're a family who chooses our names, right? So that's what I'm choosing. If it's okay. I want to share that with both of you. And with my sister. So I wanted to know if she's going to be a 'Swan' or a 'Cassidy' or a 'Swan-Cassidy' or a 'Cassidy-Swan'..."

"She should definitely be part Swan," imparted Neal with a smile. "It's a _way_ cooler name than 'Cassidy'. Even your mom was conned into choosing it by a certain puppet whose ass I still have to kick..."

"Yeah, I haven't gotten around to that either, come to think of it," Emma remembered. "But if Henry's going for the full royal stuffy names thing, we can't leave her out. Cool or not, this kid is a part of you, and the name you chose is part of your story."

"Fair enough," Neal agreed.

Henry suddenly snapped his fingers and announced, "Oh, I like Charlotte!"

"Ah... didn't you just break up with your girlfriend?" Neal asked, confused. "Already got a new crush?"

"No, it's a name I just thought of for my sister," he answered, rolling his eyes. "You know, _Charlotte's Web_. It's about friendship. And writing. It was my favorite book when I was little."

"And has a good message," recalled Emma. "That friendship can come between the most unlikely of pairings, one should always keep learning, and death doesn't mean forgetting the people you love - or trying to replace them."

"And that people are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print," Neal reminded. "Story of our world. Literally."

"Hey, don't ruin the vibe, Neal!" Emma complained and he laughed.

"Fine. You do always get a smile outta someone if you say 'salutations' instead of 'hi', though half the time it's cause they think you're a nutter," he said then shrugged, concluding, "I think 'Charlotte' is a good name. But it's up to your mom. She's doing all the hard work."

"I didn't fight a manticore," Emma pointed out.

"It was more a case of running away Monty Python style away from trolls, wyverns, kraken, and one really messed up chimera, and _two_ manticores," Neal explained, "and then getting our asses saved by a sphinx with some kind of giant magical kitty monster grudge against the more persistent one - and Regina twisting her ankle because of a demented magic carpet, so I got to do the honors and unnecessarily stab you with the other giant magical kitty monster blood that she got in between the running. You should probably get her something."

"She _did_ try to kill me several times. So she kind of owed me," Emma stated. And off Henry's sigh, amended, "I'll take her some of that nasty kale salad and weird bottled rootbeer she likes."

"Thanks, Mom," Henry smiled. "Mom really does want stuff to be good between you guys."

"We're getting there."

"Is that 'Mom' and 'Mom' thing ever not gonna confuse the crap outta me?" Neal groaned.

"There's an inflection," Emma told him. "You'll figure it out eventually."

"Can we just rename your brother to avoid inflections?"

"How about we just not name our this kid after any family members," Emma said, hand on her stomach. "I don't remember hearing about any evil aunts or cousins named 'Charlotte'. And presumably your brother forgot all his spider-related trauma. I'm not usually for girlie names, but we could call her 'Charley' for short."

Neal flashed a grin. "Like the song?"

"It was playing on the radio the other night, before you came back," Emma explained. "Crazy ionsopheric skip picked up a station in Portland, and not the one within easy driving distance."

"Sounds like a sign then," Neal replied, still grinning and leaned over Emma's stomach. "Whatdaya say, Princess?"

Emma rolled her eyes at him... then felt... Her brows furrowed. No, it was too soon. "No.. no that was definitely gas."

"So, what you're saying is, you have a 'gut feeling' that the kid agrees," Neal replied.

"Smart ass! Give me some clothes so I can get out of here and into a comfortable bed and the extremely ugly but super comfortable pajamas my fashion-challenged mother got me for Christmas!" Emma huffed.

"You're gonna wear the kitty pajamas!?" Henry laughed. "You said you were gonna burn them!"

"Yeah, well, they were free and they're flannel and the radiator is still malfunctioning," Emma answered. "But don't tell your grandmother that's the only reason I kept them."

"Hold up," Neal wondered suddenly, "why aren't your parents here? No one called them?"

"I tried," shrugged Henry. "I figured they went to do some negotiations or something with the Camelot camp people before the Town Hall meeting and got their phones confiscated since Aurora thinks electronics are demon magic."

"The meeting was canceled," Whale told Emma as he walked into the room, amending, "FYI, the guy who stabbed you is downstairs in the asylum. Someone dropped him off outside the ER all tied up. Seems he sampled one or two of his brews, probably to avoid interrogation or plead insanity, so he's enjoying a padded cell, an adult diaper, and an apparent fear of animated baskets. Not sure if they're as creepy as animated brooms."

He closed Emma's chart. "Anyway, much as I hate to not find anything wrong you, you're free to go. But bedrest tomorrow. Your body still has to recover from the paralysis. You may have gotten a magic quick fix, but one thing I have learned about magic is that treating one as such usually results in patients back in my ER. And I am _really_ getting tired of treating your ungrateful family!"

After Whale stormed out again, Henry remarked, "So... does he really need to get laid, or what?" Off his parents glares, he sighed, "Too soon and still grounded?"

"Don't worry," Emma joked, "it probably won't last for more than seven months. We'll needed to turn your room into a nursery after all."

Instead of taking that as a dig, Henry brightened and asked, "Does that mean I can get an apartment above the garage?"

"Are you going to rebuild the garage along with the apartment?"

"Does it count if I supervise the Dwarfs?"

* * *

Speaking of those odd egg-hatched men, back at the farm, Snow, Charming, and their son slept blissfully in their beds, fairy dust dancing over their heads while Sister Astrid sat on the couch, snuggled up against Leroy, sharing a bowl of popcorn and watching a very _very_ naughty cartoon that Dopey had found during his travels outside of Storybrooke but had been refusing to let Leroy borrow, hence the fisticuffs. It was amazing what fairy dust could do to cure the effects of certain potions.

"Oh! That's so wrong!" Astrid giggled as an animated Cinderella traded her ballgown for a g-string.

"Just wait!" beamed Leroy. "I have a cameo coming up selling dirty pictures of Snow White to Red Riding Hood! And then Red strips naked and crashes a wedding and there's an _orgy_!"

"Oooo I heard about fairy orgies once," Astrid tittered. "From Tinkerbell. Mother Superior got very cross! I think she's just upset that she never got invited to any parties at Mt. Olympus."

* * *

Meanwhile, in the corner of a padded cell, Jack Horner rocked in place singing:

A-tisket, a-tasket

A green and yellow basket

I send a letter to my mommy

On the way I dropped it

I dropped it, I dropped it

Yes, on the way I dropped it

A little girlie picked it up

And took put it in her pocket

* * *

 **AN** : Anyone know if the Gideon's "friend" that Fiona murdered was the son of Jack & Jill (who according to a deleted scene almost got married at Granny's until Jill left Jack for another woman... so they were apparently unwed with a bastard child in FTL because the dumbshit writers don't coordinate between episodes)? And was it ever stated how/when/why that wardrobe suddenly required Savior tears to open it? The species origin of the various magical creatures here is quasi-made up. According to Greek mythology, most everything from centaurs to manticores were created by either Titans having sex in animal form, Zeus having sex with an animal, or some weird experiment or punishment (like the ones in Tartarus in "Heathens"). I based the feline appearance/frailties of the manticore on the extinct Saber-Toothed Tiger (which has no genetic relation to a modern tiger). I have no idea how, mythologically, these animals are supposed to reproduce since many are either only female or male, so I put an alchemist game warden in charge of perpetuating the species, which I'm going to wager have extremely long lives, and I figured some kind of _Jurassic Park_ thing happened after the Dark Curse removed all the humans from Midas' kingdom. As for Jack, he was found by that apothecary that Jefferson mentioned going herb-picking in the woods; I guess she wasn't quite so harmless after all!

 **Quotes:**

Tyrion Lannister: What's the punishment for regicide? Drawing and quartering? Hanging? Breaking at the wheel?

Jaime Lannister: Beheading.

Tyrion Lannister: Seems rather ordinary

– _Game of Thrones,_ 'The Mountain and the Viper' (4×08)

 **Sphinx Riddles:**

Regina's riddle is the actual one in the Greek story/play Oedipus. Neal's riddle (and response) is from the _Northern Exposure_ episode "The Quest" in which Dr. Joel Fleischman goes... well... on a quest

 **Nursery Rhymes:**

 _A-tisket, a-tasket_ , part of the version sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

 **Next up** : Emma's Chinese food cravings get stymied again while Charming gets back in touch with his pet shelter roots.


	22. Sparkles

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO**

 **SPARKLES**

(flashback)

Storybrooke's citizenry hadn't cheered when the sun successfully set, or even commented on it setting on the wrong horizon. Instead, they'd quietly disappeared back into their houses and apartments to make dinner, do homework, and crawl into comfy, flea-free beds with down pillows that didn't require shooting and plucking a dozen ducks. They were used to the world almost ending and took it in stride... or perhaps took it like desensitized residents of war-torn communities took shelling and car bombings. But at least in Storybrooke they had indoor plumbing, antibiotics, and Hot Pockets, so in that regard it was a better world in which to constantly fear doom and destruction than one with open sewers, "pricey" potions, and chimera balls. (Sure, prescription drugs weren't cheap, but credit card interest was better than handing over one's first born.)

When morning came, those residents awoke from dreams of getting a few months break before the next magical asshole showed up to complicate their bake sales and tax returns, gave some silent thanks for the familiar ringing of the clock tower, and then went about making breakfast and grumbling about being unable to find the car keys.

Despite the recurrent magical mayhem, Storybrooke was normally a _normal_ town, at least with regard to people's everyday lives.

One of those people was David Nolan, briefly known by the alias of Prince James the Dragonslayer adopted from his twin brother who'd been himself adopted by a king. More recently, upon a year-long return to The Enchanted Forest, he'd officially become Prince David, consort to the never-officially-coronated Queen Snow White. But back in Storybrooke, David still paid his credit card bills with the surname this world had given him - and in most other aspects of his everyday life went by the once sarcastic nickname of "Charming".

Hence the welcome mat imprinted with "The Charmings" that was given by Regina as a housewarming gift. It wasn't likely meant to be a _nice_ gift, but their frenemy's derrisive use of his nickname as a collective for them had always seemed to go over Snow's head. They'd ceased hostilities with Regina several years ago now, but they would likely always be more bound together by family ties than having any real friendship of choice... but that was better than trying to kill one another.

It was always nice when the headline in the paper wasn't about bloody conflict between members of their family.

It was also always nice when the paper boy actually attempted to reach the doormat. Then David didn't have to walk out in the muddy driveway to get it. Because Wilby II wouldn't. Instead, he'd try take a dump on the empty mat!

"Shoo! Go in the yard!" David ordered the collie who'd started to squat.

Wilby II whined a little, but trotted out into the drizzly morning to do his business on the autumn-yellowing lawn. Rolling his eyes, David walked down the front path to grab the newspaper from the driveway. The original Wilby would have fetched it, but his Pet Shelter adopted namesake still needed a bit of training, even nine months on. Obviously, the dog had suffered some manner of abuse or neglect, and though very loyal, he had a few weird behavioral quirks that hadn't yet been cured, like a rain phobia.

Even for dogs, second chances and happy beginnings took some easing into around here, it seemed.

"Well, you didn't pee on the rug this morning waiting for me to get up, so that's an improvement," David told the collie while tossing the paper onto the mat. Wilby II just wagged his tale and joined David on the walk to the barn where a pen corralled a half dozen sheep.

After letting them out, the collie's instincts took over and he herded them out into the grassy field behind the house. David next let out a few goats that were less prone to wandering off than the sheep and went about milking the cow he got from Jack. He felt a bit bad for the guy; his common-law wife Jill left him for another woman on their wedding day following a tumultuous relationship that began with a nearly fatal accident, an alcohol-induced pregnancy out of wedlock, and a payment to Rumplestiltskin that sounded like it might have led to their son being taken by the Black Fairy, but since those kids all got returned to the point from which they were abducted, no one other than Gold and Belle actually remembered life without their sons. Just a few hundred or so additional paradoxes that Hera and her goddesses had been tasked with straightening out so the worlds didn't implode again, David supposed.

In any event, Jack and Jill had sold their farm to David and Snow along with the cow. Jill, her lover, and their son ended up moving into the Loft. And last he'd heard, Jack had something of a drinking problem. David supposed that he would too if he'd fallen in love with his twin sister from whom he was separated at birth and had a kid with her resulting in a very weird relationship that might be considered slightly less repugnant in The Enchanted Forest than here, but not by much once it got out after the non-wedding that they were siblings. It was their kid that David felt most sorry for, but he couldn't exactly judge.

They were all supposed to do better for their kids than they'd gotten with their own upbringings, but it seemed like a lot of them were failing at that, including David and his wife. Ironically, of course, that revelation came when David was starting to feel like he'd reached a good balance in his life of public service befitting his role as Prince Consort and personal happiness with the farm he'd once run from and found he actually missed as a connection to his humble past and escape from political responsibilities. Or maybe he'd been deluding himself from the start?

Loving wife, young son, new house with more than one bathroom, and a grown daughter who'd found her own fairytale life with a man she loved and worked side-by-side with keeping the town safe, a teenage son who was better behaved than many, and the picket fences of suburbia sounded like happiness. But it was all the angle you viewed it from, with or without rose-colored glasses.

His daughter's happiness, for certain, had turned out to be an illusion shattered just a few weeks ago. Emma had never found her happy beginning. Instead, her sister had hijacked her life! He and Snow had twins, it turned out, that were magically fused into one person for most of their lives, one subverted in the other (Anna in Emma and then more recently Emma in Anna) and entirely unaware of it. Anna was, like David's brother, an "Evil Twin" so it was now uncertain exactly what her capacity for love was, Henry wasn't her son obviously, and she'd worked side-by-side with Hook running a Sheriff's Department filled with gross police misconduct that was only just discovered when Regina decided to audit it after Emma shared her sister's memories.

David was dreading learning the extent of what Anna had done and what Hook had gotten up to when he wasn't glued to her side like a slutty barnacle given how happy he'd been to rough up Bo Peep for David... something which had already led to a lawsuit and settlement that had Regina extremely pissed at David for quite awhile and Gold still gloating.

As he let the cow out to pasture, David considered that he was also dreading the next few weeks, perhaps even months, of trying to reconcile his and Snow's relationship with Emma. It had been hard enough to earn her trust and gain her love the first time around and just when they were riding the high of thinking they'd finally become a family...

David grimaced while bailing some hay, stabbing at it a bit more forcefully than necessary.

They'd been so happy about being able to help their daughter find a happy beginning as an adult in spite of her miserable one as a child. But now it turned out that they'd only accomplished that for _one_ of their daughters and, as it turned out, _at the expense of the other's happiness_ , the other that they'd _thought_ they were helping. Which left Emma isolated, grieving, and embittered while trying to reconnect with her son and starting today officially settling back into the job her sister had been doing, and not doing especially well it seemed.

Looking up at the modest white house and red barn, David reflected that when he purchased this place, he had thought his mother would be proud of what he'd accomplished given all the obstacles he'd faced. Now... now he worried that she would be so very disappointed in him.

Ruth had sacrificed her life so that he had the chance to be a father with the woman he'd just married, but now Anna, his empathy-challenged child, was off who knew where with only her husband of seriously questionable morals. And Emma, who had empathy to spare, was angry and grieving the loss, yet again, of Henry's father who might not have died in the first place if David had been a better man, not allowing his judgment to be clouded by his own, it turned out, completely wrong beliefs about his own father.

Robert had been a good man and wanted to be a good father. Neal had been a good man too who'd also wanted to be a good father, but David hadn't given him that chance because of his own hang-ups. He doubted explaining that to Emma would make her hate him any less... any more than explaining how a toilet worked would get Neal's namesake to stop peeing on the carpet like the dog.

So he was basically 0 for 3 with successfully parenting his children.

At least Neal was young enough to not know all the times David had already let him down, starting before he was even born, sending his mother out with her pirate-shaped Achilles Heal to get bested by a witch trying to kill the newborn babe. Emma called his actions "chauvinistic not chivalrous". Maybe she was right. Maybe how they viewed things in The Enchanted Forest wasn't as right as they thought, and if that was true, then David wanted to be better. At the very least, he didn't want to get lumped into the same category as Hook when his daughter was throwing verbal barbs.

But it didn't sound like that was going to be easily achieved. And his wife wasn't having any easier a time.

Snow was in the kitchen when David returned and put the milk into a pot to boil, a portion for the best homemade hot chocolate in town that was meant as a peace offering to Emma; there were no guarantees it would work after she'd been in a surely mood and avoided the post-apocalyptic dinner party/re-wedding reception at Granny's last night. The newspaper, now open on the table was headlined **Worlds Stopped From Ending (Again)** and David by-passed it to pour himself some coffee.

"Emma come down yet?"

"Not yet," sighed Snow. "She was in the bathroom when I went to check on Neal. I think she's over anxious for her first day back on the job. I remember how nervous she was the first time around, after she won the election, to be a proper Sheriff and carry on Graham's attempts to reform things from the department that Regina had him running."

"And somehow we turned a blind eye to the things Anna was doing," grimaced David, "that was very much like the way Regina had Graham running things."

"We did," Snow agreed with a wince while adding chocolate to the milk. "I can't say that I'm proud of that, David, compromising my ethics for my daughter's happiness. And I know it's not the first time I've done it. I know darkening my heart, even just a little, by killing Cora, made it so much easier to do the wrong thing even if it was for the right reasons."

"Making those choices is never easy," sighed David. "Anna forgave them. She made the same choices for love."

"She did," Snow nodded. "But Emma... I'm not so sure about."

"No. She has more of my mother in her."

"And Anna has more of mine," Snow noted. "For better or worse, that's who they are. But your mother wasn't unforgiving, David. I don't think she held your father's choice against him forever. I'm sure spite isn't the reason she didn't tell you why he left that night. And my mother, even if she wasn't cursed, was certainly a selfish person who did awful things, but eventually she realized that wouldn't bring happiness and wanted to raise me better than she was. And I have to believe that if she'd lived, she would have done some real good herself. So I have to believe that Emma can get passed what she sees as a betrayal and that Anna can overcome the inclinations of her curse. That they can both find happiness.

"With Emma... it's just going to take more than saying 'I'm sorry' to get back to where we last stood with her," she finished with a sigh.

"I know," David agreed. All Anna needed was a day, an "I'm sorry", and promise to try better and she put it in the past. Emma needed actions and time, actual proof of regret and change to put the past behind her. And given the two years that she saw as proving all manner of things she despised, it wasn't looking promising to manage anything but a miserably awkward Thanksgiving this year... which would be their first in this house, and also their first without their other daughter - and Hook - which was probably a good thing since Henry wanted to invite Gold and Belle... and their child that Snow and Anna had threatened to murder. Boy was he glad to have been under a sleeping curse for _that_!

"I should probably start," Snow continued, "by getting new linens for the guest room bed. I know Anna only spent the night here once when her place was being fumigated for those magic scarab beetles, but I'm not sure she actually did any _sleeping_ and Emma is obviously a bit touchy about her sister's sex life. Maybe flipping the mattress would help..."

"Thanks for ruining my delusion that we're the only couple having sex in this house," David grouched. "You know I don't like thinking about that any more than Emma, Snow! Just watching Anna and Hook make sheep eyes at each other makes me nauseous."

"Anna _is_ a bit... overly demonstrative," Snow agreed with a roll of her eyes as she stirred the pot. "That certainly surprised me. I didn't expect Emma would be transformed by love-"

"Into a bit of a slut?" David groaned, getting items out of the pantry.

"David!" Snow hissed, but relented. "I just thought she was tightly wound and love had... unwound her and she had years of being emotionally repressed to make up for and given her experiences, physical expressions of that were easier for her. Hook is an _obvious_ slut, but I was hoping she'd work through her issues in therapy with Archie and tone it down a bit."

"Fat chance of that happening now," David sighed, amending, "Emma's right, Snow. We should have known better. If we didn't expect it, that should have been an indication that something was wrong. We should have... I don't know... been more confident that we knew our _not slutty_ daughter and not so... desperate to excuse all those changes in behavior to find her a happy ending - or beginning - that would somehow absolve us of not being there for her."

"We screwed up," Snow grimaced. "We shouldn't have been so quick to presume Emma's first love was just a manipulation of the Curse and get her to move on quickly, to not dwell it and keep her from finding true happiness. But learning Regina's situation with Tinkerbell, if anything, should have advised us that was a terrible idea. And now... maybe we pushed Anna too quickly, especially now that she really has to deal with her disability. We can't fool ourselves that Killian is emotionally mature or stable enough to replace Emma's tempering influence. I'm worried for her just as much as Emma, David."

"I know. I'm worried that she'll come back more like my brother," admitted David. "We'll have lost her to that damn curse, just like my parents lost James. And we'll have lost Emma for all the choices we made that set her sister up to fail. Next, we'll accidentally drop our son down a portal."

"Well, not for six months at least," Snow quipped wryly.

"Right," he agreed with a snort before asking, "Where's our rug-ruining little prince anyway? The not-furry one?"

"Henry's getting him dressed. They're going to take some of the apples Regina brought the other day to Geronimo before breakfast."

David nodded absently. They had a horse now. A horse from New York City that probably knew Henry's father better than any of them. His grandson had suggested using dreamcatcher magic to try and view the horse's memories the way they had Pongo's when Archie was fake murdered, but there hadn't been time for that and it wasn't likely they'd be able to pull out anything clear from _years_ ago.

The sound of footsteps on the front staircase drew David back into the livingroom where he spotted Emma coming down, dressed for the day in... her Sheriff's uniform. He could recall her wearing the shirt a few years way back when she was first elected, but never the whole thing other than for Graham's funeral.

"There's stairs to the kitchen in the back, past your mother's crafts room," David reminded her.

"Yeah... I was just going to grab something from Granny's before meeting with Regina to go over the Town Hall stuff," Emma replied with a shrug. "Is Henry done feeding the horse or did he catch the bus already?"

"I don't know if he's even gone outside yet. School is starting late today on account of the world almost ending yesterday. So there's plenty of time for all of us to have breakfast together. I was going to make pancakes."

Emma frowned a little. "I don't feel like pancakes."

"Okay... so just eggs and toast even," David attempted. "When's the last time you had a home cooked meal, Emma? And not that greasy stuff from Granny's."

Her frown increased. "A couple of years."

David winced. "You know what I mean. Please come and sit and eat with us. I know this is hard for you. Everything is a big adjustment, but avoiding all the changes won't make it easier. You're our daughter, and even if you're angry at us and have every right to be, none of us can move beyond what happened if we don't... try getting to know each other better than we did before."

Emma gave him a dubious look, but hung her coat up on the peg by the front door and followed him to the kitchen. Snow had hot chocolate waiting and that did seem to ease some of the tension from Emma's shoulders as she took a sip and a seat at the table they'd brought with them from the Loft.

She focused on the newspaper and David and Snow focused on making breakfast while surreptitiously watching the child that was their firstborn of twins they'd not realized they were having since they were born as one very special baby girl.

Since their twins were separated, even with the distraction of an apocalypse, David had been struck by the differences between their daughters, and he knew his wife had noticed them too. For some reason the most striking ones were the little things like the way Emma bit her bottom lip and took exaggerated breaths when she was anxious. Anna didn't do that. She was more prone to being fidgety while setting her mouth into a grim line. Had they never noticed or dismissed this change after Pan's Curse or had each exhibited a combination of their individual habits? Then there were odd, contradictory quirks like Emma's interest in make-up and curling her hair combined with more masculine clothes and Anna's aversion to make-up (save distractedly bright red lipstick at times) and preference for very frilly and flowery feminine clothing but simple ponytails or seemingly leaving her hair unbrushed.

Of course, in her brown uniform and the glasses she'd been wearing since the potion splitting instead of her old contacts (which Anna had thrown out after her Dark One corrected vision), even with a touch of blush and time spent adding curls to her hair, Emma looked quite different from even her original appearance, the daughter David had just been getting to know. In some ways, with Anna now gone, it was like going back in time, or plucking Emma out of the past and transporting her to the present, a reminder of the person he'd thought his daughter outgrew over the past two years.

The changes had _seemed_ gradual, but maybe he'd just told himself that. Or perhaps the differences were a bit more extreme now that each of his twins was not subverted in the other, having some influence on the other's behavior and personality. But it was still rather shocking and unsettling the things they'd ignored, accepted, and made excuses for to keep from questioning some very contradictory and hypocritical things - and to congratulate themselves that, regardless of any disagreements with their daughter's choices in life and love - they'd helped her get that happy beginning in spite of all the hardships that had delayed it by about 31 years.

Emma was still looking for hers, had lost more than one chance as much by his and Snow's actions as her own and others, and there seemed no easy getting around that fact. So here they were, two years after sitting down to breakfast and planning out working on Neal's crib and fighting Zelena, sitting down to breakfast at the farm next door to the former Wicked Witch's with their daughter. It felt very different.

Sure, things were a bit tense then, Emma acting aloof as she was trying to decide if she would stay or go, but she'd trusted them, loved them, been happy for them even while trying to find a project to put off dealing with her grief at losing Henry's father only a few days before and her natural resentment of her brother. Now... that feeling of family, of relying on each other to get through the pain... It was more like they had a virtual stranger at their kitchen table, a woman who didn't trust them at all to share anything. Who maybe didn't even love them.

The parents she'd loved were people who existed before Anna changed the past and they were gone now. The Emma who'd made pancakes with David that morning before his son's birth hadn't known that he and Snow refused to help Neal get back to her, chose instead to give their supplies to Hook and refused to sanction Neal's quest with Belle even after he'd risked his life to help them regain that castle.

They had been selfish and narrow-minded, but maybe that was generally the way with parents and their children. That didn't make it easier to find light at the end of the tunnel. It didn't excuse what they'd done - or not done - for someone that Emma and Henry considered family.

If anything, now Emma had her walls up twice as high and thick, not trusting them to accept or be proud of her after what had seemed to her a concerted effort to change her/commend the person Anna had transformed the image of their daughter into over the past two years - which left Emma with the impression that they must not have liked the daughter they met, wanted to make her into someone like Anna. _Why else would they let that happen, not question the changes?_

David was still trying to figure that out himself. And figure out how to change Emma's false impression that she'd let fly with a great deal of vitriol at her mother in New York. He wanted her to know that he _was_ proud of her, that even if he'd accepted all of the things Anna had done, the choices she'd made, the person they'd made her into, that didn't mean he liked his daughter better in ballgowns and lace or would be disappointed in her if she didn't accept old customs and traditions as easily - or at all - as her sister had.

He just wanted Emma to be herself and feel comfortable and happy as that person. Having had to impersonate his brother and then continue to pretend he was James - with a head-injury induced personality shift - for three years and _then_ the past few years with the Sheriff's Department and being an alderman... Getting back to farming, the thing he'd been running from in his youth, left David realizing that this was his identity more than Prince Charming. This was where he felt comfortable and happy and got up every morning looking forward to tending to the animals and mending the fences. He just wanted that for Emma. If she didn't want to be a princess, then he certainly couldn't fault that.

And if she didn't want to join them for family meals, he couldn't fault her for that either.

Really, they were just lucky that Emma was staying at the farm at all. And it probably wouldn't be long before she, like Anna, felt smothered under their roof and found a place of her own. Well, maybe a bit longer since Anna had left her short on finances and Emma had zero interest in playing live-in housesitter at her sister's place; but so far it felt more like running an Airbnb than having their daughter living with them again.

David managed not to burn the eggs and bacon with his distracted thoughts, just barely. Snow was buttering the toast and pouring more coffee and orange juice when Henry arrived with a slightly muddy but happy Neal who gave his sister a megawatt grin and an excited, "Emmy!"

"Ah...hey, little bro," Emma replied with a small smile. "You muck the stall too?"

"Not intentionally," snorted Henry while David lifted the little boy into his booster seat at the table and Snow fetched wet paper towels to clean off the mud.

"Are you coming back here after school," Emma asked, "or going to Regina's?"

"Here, I guess. Lasagna Night's put off until tomorrow because of the Town Hall meeting. I think school is mostly just for one of those 'the world almost ended, we have on-site counseling if you need it' assemblies."

"Those are important," Snow argued. "Some kids _and teachers_ need it. I'll drive you."

"Great," Henry groaned.

"Oh, it's not cool having your grandmother drive you to school?" Snow harumphed.

"Why can't I be in high school already?" Henry groaned.

"Maybe you would be," Emma scoffed, "if when you came back from New York a year ahead of your classmates you hadn't gone back to serial ditching class, failing your subjects, and spending all your time obsessing over a book of stories."

"Emma!" Snow chided while Henry slumped in his chair and poked at his food. "Those stories helped Henry during a difficult period in his life. It's not his fault - _or mine_ \- that there was a sinister motive behind them. What _happened_ happened. Everyone coped with a lot of complicated situations in their own way. There's no need to be mean."

"Yeah, well, my sister is mean twenty-four seven," Emma reminded. "You never told her to stop being Worst Mother of the Year to Henry, which included her not caring that he was ditching class and flunking his subjects. Neither did you, because I guess education isn't actually important in the medieval world you consider home sweet home so what future prospects does Henry have in this world? None. Which is probably what you actually want. Well, excuse me for wanting Henry to be able to make a life in this world that's better than being an Uber driver instead of just assuming he's going to marry some princess and rule a kingdom so why bother learning algebra or even how to write above fifth grade English?"

Emma pushed her plate away and stood up. "Forget it. I really have to get to City Hall. Thanks for breakfast."

As Emma left, Henry continued to poke at his food and Neal played with his, confused about the whole situation other than deducing, "Emmy go?"

"Yeah, kiddo," David patted his head. "Emmy had to go."

The toddler looked dejected, the same as when Anna consistently ignored him to flirt with Hook at the table.

Giving Henry a kind look, Snow told him, "I'm sorry, Henry. I'm sure your mom isn't really angry with you."

Grimacing, he replied, "It's fine. I get it. She gave me up hoping I'd have my best chance, the one she didn't get. She didn't even finish junior high. My dad didn't even go to school. Mom just wants me to not waste my potential... preferably, I think, not waste it in this world... or waste it _on_ another world."

"I'm sure that's not true, Henry," Snow insisted. "If you find your happy beginning in worlds different than this one, it doesn't mean you're not reaching your potential or that Emma won't be proud. It just means you have more than one skill and you're choosing the one that makes you happiest. That's all any parent wants for their child."

"Maybe, but it won't make Emma happy if I choose those other worlds," sighed Henry.

"Right now Emma blames those worlds for the tragedies in her life," explained David, "that have left her feeling alone and confused. But it's not the fault of any worlds. It's the choices that people in them, and in this one, made. In time, hopefully, she'll see that. In the meantime, just give yourself every opportunity to succeed, because no one knows where they'll find their happiness."

"If they can find it at all," moped Henry.

Snow patted him on the back. "I know Emma thinks that she won't. But so did Regina after Daniel died. She can still find happiness. Maybe it will be with someone. Maybe it will be her job. Or something else. But Emma has you, and right now, helping you have your best chance at happiness, in the way Emma sees that, is the closest thing she has to her own happiness."

"Is that what you did with Aunt Anna?" asked Henry. "Why you kind of pressured her into you guys' ideas of happiness even though Mom had made it clear that she didn't like The Enchanted Forest?"

Snow winced at that and David considered, "Maybe. We wanted to be happy as a family. It seemed harmless to try and ease Emma into certain things, certain ideas."

"And Anna didn't seem to mind it quite as much," Snow concluded. "She was more willing to humor us and just roll her eyes and do her own thing regardless."

"Yeah, cause she's basically a sociopath," snorted Henry, "who'd be a full-on psychopath if she hadn't had Mom to lend her some empathy."

"Don't say that, Henry," Snow sussed. "People can learn to overcome their shortcomings, whether they come from nature, nurture, or magic. They just need the motivation and the help. And we're going to help your aunt be the best person she can. We're not going to let her turn out like your Uncle James. Or your Aunt Zelena."

"If you say so," Henry shrugged and stood. "I'm gonna see if Aunt Zelena can give me a ride to town. I should get to school early and study in the library. If I don't pass midterms, both my moms'll ground me for the rest of the school year."

"And one of them won't be happy that you're getting a ride with Zelena," Snow pointed out.

"Well, I'd call August, but I don't want to ride on his bike in the rain," Henry replied, "so Zelena's my next best option to guilt into giving me a ride for screwing over my parents. Besides, I consider it like a psych wellness check. If she's taking her meds or not. If she's plotting to nefariously adopt a baby like my mom. Or just run off with Uncle Neal and give him those magic mushrooms Ella accidentally gave her kid that de-aged Alexandra to a baby again and made her into a boy for like six months."

"He does have a good point," David relented. "I don't trust that woman. I don't trust her driving, but I trust her sanity even less. And I think Regina gets blinded by familial ties as to just how crazy and cruel she is."

Henry coughed something that sounded a lot like "Anna" and got a sour look from both of his grandparents.

"Fine," Snow agreed, "but take some toast and bacon to go. And if Emma finds out, you never told us. We're in a deep enough hole with her as it is."

"You got it. Thanks, Grandma."

Once it was just The Charmings, David let out a weary sigh, stating the obvious with sarcasm, "That went well."

"I probably shouldn't have falsified Henry's report cards so Emma and Regina wouldn't worry," Snow winced. "I really did think that he was just acting out because Emma was dating Hook and the Author thing... and then I just dug myself deeper into _that_ hole. I'm a horrible principal!" she lamented.

"But a well-meaning grandmother," David argued.

"Which hasn't helped anyone, has it?" Snow sighed, poking at her scrambled eggs. "I just wanted us to all sit down and eat as a family like we used to without feeling like there's some elephant in the room or that we're pretending somehow. Looking back, I don't think we really have since Granny's taco party. Things just started falling apart. Every time I tried after that, whether it was with Emma or Anna, it's just felt forced and fake, like no one really wants to be there. Maybe we shouldn't bother anymore, David."

"We bother because there's always a chance it'll get better and it won't be acting for the sake of doing what families are supposed to do, but because we are a family and we want to share a meal together," David stated. "Things can't get worse, anyway. But maybe breakfast isn't the best meal to force on Emma."

"Maybe you're right," Snow considered. "She has all those memories of us popping in to make breakfast for Anna. She probably feels like her sister stole that from her before she had a chance to even get comfortable with having breakfast with her parents the same age as her. Plus, Anna did have a routine of making pancakes for Killian and then having sex on the kitchen table and counter and against the fridge afterward..."

"WHAT!?" David choked on his coffee. "I ate a sandwich once on the table without a plate! I've set my phone and keys on that counter! _And my hands!_ I've touched things! Can you get pirate STDs from that? And I've eaten her leftover _sex_ pancakes! I've eaten _sex-pancakes, Snow! What if I got Hepatitis!?_ Why didn't you tell me!?"

"You said you didn't like knowing about the carnal nature of your daughter's life," Snow reminded. "You've also eaten sex-waffles."

"Noooooooo! My two favorite breakfast foods!"

Snow gave him a sorry look and patted his arm. "Now you know a little bit how Emma feels. She has the actual 'memories'. But there's still french toast. Thankfully, it's too complicated for Anna's limited culinary skills."

"Yes, well," David grumbled, "I'm not tipping Granny now. She gave them that damn waffle iron."

"She also baby-sits our son for free," Snow reminded. "That's more than worth a sex-waffle iron. There's also crepes. We could try crepes. I think Belle has a recipe."

"Belle hates you. She'll have Gold curse it."

"That's true," grimaced Snow. "In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have threatened to murder her son in cold blood a week after he was born and the day after he pleaded with my daughter that he was one of many abducted and abused children who was being used by the Black Fairy. I let that dark spot go a bit overboard."

"I saw the security video. You went full-on after-that-memory-potion-assassin psycho," David corrected.

"You beat the shit out of George in a padded cell and had to be pried off by the mass-murdering serial rapist who killed your father," Snow reminded. "I think we both went equally off the rails, Charming."

David sighed and sat back in his chair and wondered, "We weren't always those people, were we? Who flipped out like that? Who chose the easy and violent solution? Did Anna - Elsa's sister - inspire something that was already in me? Did that potion bring out a darkness that was in you? Or were those exceptions, aberrations up until Zelena's time spell? Did that spell put darkness in us, or did it just bring out darkness that was already there and make it harder to shove it back in or burn it out with light?"

"Everyone has darkness," Snow answered. "Or the potential for it, anyway. That's why I foolishly believed we needed to cast that spell on Emma. I was afraid it would come out and we wouldn't be able to contain it. Neither of us was ever perfect, but I think it did become harder to listen to the better angels of our nature after the past was changed, after that dark magic shifted things toward the more selfish and cruel. Which doesn't mean it's a blanket excuse. And we still have to try to kick those nasty habits. The darkness might not be everywhere, but each time you step over that line... it becomes harder to not cross it again. That's what Regina said. It doesn't mean just using magic. It just means doing what's easy and self-serving over what's harder and selfless. And you don't need magic as encouragement for that."

"Even if we can become the people we used to be, regaining Emma's trust isn't going to be easy. She won't stand for that," frowned David.

"It shouldn't ever have been," Snow shrugged. "We got off easy the first time around, I think. Broken curses, Enchanted Forest bonding adventures, finding and losing Neal, and the town being nearly torn to shreds. She let some of her walls down faster than she would have otherwise because of those shocks. But now she's... accustomed to those things."

"I hate that she should have to be," David lamented. "The magical disasters and threats and responsibilities. She doesn't deserve it all, Snow, not after what she went through to get back to us."

"No, she doesn't," sighed Snow. "But... maybe we can at least get her to like pancakes again. No one should have to give up pancakes because of post traumatic sibling sex by proxy stress."

"Yeah, I think I'm going to need some time myself. I might become a germaphob," groaned David.

* * *

There was that moment of fuzzy confusion that always comes with waking up to an out-of-the-ordinary situation but which passed as familiar things like smell and touch informed Emma that the hand on her hip and the breath against the back of her neck belonged to her no-longer-dead lover and the unpleasant draft belonged to the master bedroom of her recently acquired-at-auction house.

As Emma pulled the covers up to her nose, glad she'd remembered to put a winter cap on before bed, Neal's hand slipped from her hip to her stomach, which for once didn't feel queasy, she realized, though there was now a slightly uncomfortable tightness from stretching muscles and ligaments, indicating that things were definitely progressing on the inside, even if moving her own hand to her abdomen she didn't feel any marked changes yet as Neal's lips brushed against her neck just behind her ear.

For once it wasn't a dream and maybe she could allow herself to hope again that her life wouldn't turn once more into a miserable suck-fest.

"Good morning, princesses."

Emma snorted and responded, "Well, the little princess isn't making the big princess want to puke yet this morning, so, yeah, pretty good!"

She rolled over and snuggled against the warmth of Neal's chest, declaring after a minute or so, "This is nice."

"Yeah," he chuffed, tucking Emma's head under his chin. "I always did peg you for a snuggler."

"Don't tell anyone. You'll ruin my reputation for being a snarky, hug-phobic badass!"

They lay together for a few minutes just enjoying the sound of a light rain against the roof before Emma remarked, "I still can't believe you fought a manticore."

"I told you, it was more like ran away from one," Neal groaned. "One of those times in my life I actually wished that I had magic."

"Hmm, I'll bet. I wished I'd figured out I had it when I found Maleficent under the Library," Emma agreed, then asked, curious, "Do you still hate it as much as you used to? I mean, you sort of had some limited skills in The Underworld, didn't you?"

"Dead-people related skills required for the job, nothing flashy that'd really be useful here," Neal shrugged. "And I don't hate it anymore. I still think most people who can use it abuse it badly, but magic itself? I suppose I sort of reached a... deeper understanding of things before I died."

Emma tilted her head. "Because of the Vault?"

"Well sort of, but first because I shared my father's thoughts. At times anyway."

"Ah, that," Emma nodded and settled back against his chest. "Yeah, being locked up in my sister's head with a bunch of Dark Ones provided an interesting perspective. And made me more sympathetic, I guess, an emotion Anna's incapable of experiencing, and I'm pretty sure Hook can't either. It's no wonder they continued to treat your dad like crap."

She rolled her eyes before asking, "So, having a Dark One for a mental roommate broadened your magical horizons beyond 'all magic bad, must destroy!'?"

Neal rolled his eyes right back at her description. "Okay, so I had some crazy ideas as a kid. I said I got over those awhile ago. And, yeah, I got a deeper understanding of magic and how that curse works. But not just by proxy. Turns out something happened when I was a kid that my father made me forget afterward."

"What happened?" Emma asked, brows furrowing.

Neal grimaced, his humor fading into discomfort before he explained, "You know the dagger has a bit of a... thrall to it. The demon can mind whammy others to some degree and it got me to use it on my father. Like it got Belle to use it to control him, not because it wanted to hurt either of them, but because whenever the host fights the curse the easiest way to knock that fight out of them-"

"Is to have them enslaved to someone else's demands, but especially someone they love," Emma nodded. "Yeah, I remember that too. So... you used the dagger to control your dad?"

"Yeah," he sighed and explained, "See, my father had given me the dagger a few days earlier so he wouldn't be tempted by it, but then this general let his entire force get slaughtered by Ogres so he could frame my father for it. And the Darkness, it called it to me, told me that the best solution was to just kill the guy. I didn't put up much of a fight. I mean, the guy was a psycho who'd just committed war crimes and gloated about it. So I ordered my father to do it. And he did. Snapped his neck."

"You did what you thought was right," Emma told him, squeezing his arm. "Just like taking the dagger from your father and what you thought was protecting him against a threat that could have resulted in someone far more dangerous getting control of him the way that duke did Zoso. You didn't know that you were a mark in a con. So was your father, I guess."

"Yeah, and the result was that the Darkness got its tendrils deeper into my father's soul," Neal shook his head. "And that I got marked literally. Turns out that Vault requires a certain soul for swapping, someone who's controlled that particular Dark One. At the time, that was me. Belle, Zelena, they hadn't yet made that mistake. And my father had been very careful over the years about letting anyone use it against him."

Shrugging, he considered, "Maybe August... but he's a puppet made from a magic tree, so I'm not sure his soul qualifies. Plus, there was no Enchanted Forest magic here at the time so it didn't actually work.

"Point is, my actions made it impossible for my father to fight the Curse," groaned Neal, :even when he had the chance of true love. And I changed whatever my destiny originally was to be a soul place-holder for my father, which turned out to be exactly what my grandmother needed to carry out her psychotic plan of immortally and world domination. Not a coincidence. I didn't have the magical potential she was looking for, but she could keep me around so that my father would eventually sire a son who did. So it was no coincidence either that Pan's Shadow found me and took me to her ex's timeless realm or that my dear old Grandpa got that picture of Henry."

"Because Fiona's exile realm was literally outside of time," Emma recalled and then groaned herself. "She could step out into the future or past for brief periods to collect children. She went to the future to see her descendant in the time most optimal for casting her original version of the Dark Curse-"

"And made sure Henry was taken from Phoenix to Boston," Neal nodded, "while probably tittering about how brilliant Malcolm thought he was being sending John and Michael to dupe August."

"Both of your grandparents were serious assholes, Neal."

"Yeah, they really were," Neal sighed. "Purveyors of evil pixie dust and fairy dust. Probably a good thing they evil alchemy'd their way into gaining magical powers after procreating or who knows how fucked up my family line would be? We're clearly better off with untapped potential. I don't hate magic, but if I've got some hidden talent, I'm just fine with leaving it where it is and having only one sorcerer in the family," he concluded with a kiss against her temple.

Emma snorted. "I'm not sure I'm even at apprentice levels the way Regina snarks at me. And if it wasn't for all the damn savior responsibilities, I'd be perfectly happy to never graduate Storybrooke's version of Hogwarts. But since it's apparently my stupid destiny to protect this town because my name got slapped on the scroll that helped create it, I'm kind of stuck learning regardless of what I want.

"I wouldn't mind _a few_ magic skills, I'll admit. The Northern Lights/fireworks thing was neat, but I can barely manage sparkles."

She demonstrated, snapping her fingers and getting some little sparks like the last gasping fizzing of a 4th of July sparkler... that managed to singe the bedspread.

"Damn it!"

"Magic always comes with a price!" sniggered Neal.

"Shut up!" Emma gave him a shove and then her nose crinkled with a whiff of something more pleasant than burnt polyester. "Is that bacon?"

"Henry must be making you breakfast in bed," smiled Neal. "See? He's not completely lost to selfish teenager-hood yet."

"But he is even worse at cooking than I am!" Emma sat up straighter, worried. "Last time Henry tried to cook he nearly burned the kitchen down!" She threw back the covers.

Neal nudged back down. "You're supposed to take it easy. Magic physical healing doesn't fix being stressed out by the whole thing or before. You've been sick and not sleeping well and overworking yourself with the lawsuits and whatever. You need to rest and get healthy so our little cygnet doesn't wear you out."

"Cygnet, huh?" Emma laughed. "Where'd you even learn that one?"

"Belle, obviously," Neal answered. "I'll go stand by with a fire extinguisher. You enjoy not puking for awhile, Mama Swan."

"I had almost forgotten what it was like," Emma snorted, settling back into her pillow.

After finding his shoes and a hoodie to pull on over his t-shirt and pajama pants, Neal dropped a kiss at the corner of her mouth and hurried downstairs to play volunteer fireman.

Thankfully, there was no burning smell as he reached the ground floor, but there were voices that didn't belong to his son who was sitting on the couch in his pajamas watching _Good Morning Storybrooke_ with Neal's namesake who was throwing stuffed animals at the TV and jeering.

"Splaaaaaaat!"

"He doesn't like Rapunzel's aunt," Henry explained of the overly chirpy anchor who was showing how to make some fancy kind of sandwich. "She scared him once, I think."

"And you further traumatize him by making him watch her on TV?" Neal asked, brows furrowed and Henry shrugged.

"He likes throwing toys at her face. I think he wishes he had one to throw at her then, so it's more like therapy."

"Uh-uh..."

"Booooooiiiiink!" the toddler howled after throwing an old beanie-baby.

"And why exactly is your uncle... and your grandparents here?" Neal asked, glancing toward the kitchen.

Henry handed over the newspaper with the front page headline: **'Sheriff Swan Stabbed In Confrontation with** ' **Party Prankster'.**

"Mom never called them, so they found out from the paper this morning," explained Henry, "so I guess decided to do a breakfast ambush thing. They used to do that with Aunt Anna when she was avoiding them about stuff, but they've been giving Mom space since she moved out. Guess they figured an unreported stabbing was serious enough to go from giving to invading."

"Great. I figured Regina had called them," sighed Neal. "This should be fun..."

Steeling himself for his first real and unsupervised conversation with Emma's parents... well... ever, Neal headed into the kitchen where coffee was brewing. He found Snow White and Prince Charming bickering mildly over who was in whose way in the uncomfortably small kitchen while a space heater rotated at full blast... a possibly unwise idea given the house's crap wiring. Snow was tending to hot chocolate in a pot on one burner and David was mixing something in a bowl while bacon sizzled on a griddle.

"Oh, Neal," Snow noticed his arrival first, "do you know if Emma is awake?"

"Ah, yeah," he replied, hating how awkward this was, her parents showing up with no warning and the obvious fact that the house had only two bedrooms and he was not on the couch when they came in. "She was worried Henry was gonna burn down the kitchen, so I got sent to investigate. I can go and get her."

"No need yet," Snow stated. "She's supposed to be taking it easy."

"She'll try to help and we don't want her... um... _limited_ culinary skills in the way," David explained.

"Right, and where did she get _those_ from?" Snow interjected with a look.

"Hey, I've at least mastered pancakes!" David argued.

"Which Emma won't eat anymore."

"My french toast is getting better," he huffed. Mixing the batter, David mused, "And here I thought Regina had given Emma her cooking memories from what Henry said, but if she did, they didn't survive getting her own memories back. She went back to Pop-Tarts."

"Only because Henry likes them and they're cheaper than Granny's pastries, Charming," Snow reminded while stirring the pot. "Emma likes bear claws."

David laughed at that. "Oh, you're right. She'd eat half a box at Granny's while spying on our 'book club' meetings. I remember she dropped one once while trying to lean over casually to hear better. She was so obvious."

"Wait, _you_ knew she was aware we were having an affair?" Snow sputtered.

" _Everyone_ but Kathryn knew, Snow," David rolled his eyes.

"Speaking of, don't forget you have another deposition for that latest lawsuit."

"Yeah, fun times," groaned David, pouring the cinnamon , eggs, milk, and vanilla mixture into an aluminum pie plate beside the stove.

"Yeah, have fun being interrogated by your ex-wife that you thought you'd knocked up while having an affair with Grandma, Gramps," quipped Henry, wandering in to try and snag some coffee only to be glared away from the pot and handed a glass of orange juice by Snow.

"Brat!" David huffed. "Show your elders respect. And go back to keeping an eye on your uncle before he breaks the TV and Emma makes me pay for it."

"Fine. But you guys owe me. I shouldn't have to babysit _my uncle_. That's unnatural," Henry complained. "I'm gonna need therapy one day. I mean, I'm already gonna need it for thinking I walked in on my mom having sex with my step-grandfather and having to choose between boiled mackerel and grapefruit or getting Hepatitis from Aunt Anna's pancakes that she made with thirty year old Bisquick that was full of weevils... I only put that box in the cupboard to freak her and Hook out. I didn't think she'd actually use it! I guess she was too busy gagging on Hook's breakfast sausage to notice."

"HENRY!" David gasped.

Snow stopped her stirring and paled. "I ate weevil-infested pancakes!?"

"You're okay with sex-pancakes, but you freak out over pancakes with bugs in them?" David snorted. "You bragged about eating bugs while living as a bandit."

"Yes, well, I was lying to make you think I was tough. Who do I look like, Bear Grylls? I don't eat bugs! Especially not after being one!"

"Well, you did, Gran," grinned Henry and he grabbed David's coffee cup and darted off.

"You're not going to do something about that?" David accused Neal, finally seeming to remember he was there.

There was a loud "SHIT!" and a clank from the other room and Neal shrugged and replied, "That's the jinxed coffee cup. I used it the other day. Henry thought it was hilarious."

"And you weren't going to warn me?" David scowled and Neal shrugged again.

"Well, you didn't knock, so... nope."

David's scowl increased as Neal took a sip from his not jinxed cup and Snow gave her husband an exasperated look. "It's just a prank, Charming. And you got spared the embarrassment."

Off that, Snow addressed Neal, "Just in the interest of public health, was any sex had in or in the immediate vicinity of the kitchen?"

"Snow!" David groaned.

Neal tried not to look embarrassed at a direct reference to his and Emma's very recently resumed sex life and answered, "Well, I can't speak for what the old wizard got up to in here, but... ah... no. I'm not actually sure there's even enough room in here and we lived in a car."

"It definitely needs a major renovation," Snow agreed, ignoring David's glower to open the oven, which didn't even open all the way because of the refrigerator across from it.

"You can start setting the table, Neal," she told him, taking a heated plate out for the french toast.

"So..." David began while dropping more toast into the batter, "I assume _you_ were aware of Emma getting stabbed yesterday?"

"Oh, Charming, don't put it on him," Snow insisted as she turned one of the slices in the pan. "We're Emma's emergency contacts. It's on Regina for strong-arming Whale into not calling us before she got magically healed up and _Emma_ for telling her she didn't want to worry us. And I suppose us for the mess we've made of things with Emma that she doesn't feel comfortable contacting us."

"And the solution is to break in and make breakfast?" asked Neal, trying not to sound judgmental. "Just wondering. I mean, Henry said I guess it worked with her sister... when she thought she was Emma."

"To be honest, I don't think Anna really appreciated the effort," Snow answered glummly. "I think she was more annoyed at us invading her home with or without Killian around. She doesn't seem to like it being made to feel too homey. I suppose that's part of the reason she actually liked the house Henry talked Killian into picking. Emma absolutely hates it, says it's cold and dreary and looks like a murder house in a horror film... which I suppose it kind of does at night when the moon is full and the wind is blowing.

"Anyway, family kills her austere and dreary vibe, I guess,'" she shrugged. "Even Regina, at her most austere interior decor, was never dreary. Anna doesn't like makeup either. It's really a rather weird contradiction given her very feminine clothing and domesticity. I'm not really sure how much is what she likes or doesn't like and how much is projecting and mirroring what Killian likes and doesn't like or what she thinks will make us happy. I'm not sure she knows either."

"And _I'm_ not sure that spending six months on a boat with him and without her family is the best way to figure that out," grumbled David. "But give Anna advice on something, and she'll do the opposite."

"Yes, it's one of the few things she and Emma actually do seem to have in common other than appearance."

As Snow transferred some browned slices to a hot plate and David added newly battered ones to the pan, she continued, "So as disappointed as we were that Emma moved out so soon, just as Anna did, at least she's stayed in Storybrooke, when I know that before the switch happened she was seriously considering going back to New York. So now we have the chance to try and repair things with her and have a relationship like we were able to build with her sister... even if it will probably be as different as they and their houses are. And their true loves. I think your being in Neverland until the 90s rules you out in any plots to murder any of our family members and I do hope you're not an alcoholic, functional or otherwise."

"Just the occasional beer or bourbon," Neal answered. "Nothing that'd lend it self to buying a keychain that said 'Day Drunk As Fuck'."

"I wanted to think Anna got Hook that as a joke," sighed David, "but Sneezy said he bought it himself."

"POTTY!" a little boy suddenly announced, bouncing up and down on the threshold to the kitchen.

"I DON'T DO POTTY DUTY, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S DOODY-RELATED!" Henry supplied from the livingroom.

"You're turn," David told his wife. "No poopy hands in the kitchen."

Snow sighed and took her hand off the spatula, nodding to Neal, "Big Neal, you're in charge of keeping the milk from scolding. Little Neal, let's go to the bathroom!"

"NOOOOOOOO!" her son howled and ran off with his hands holding his rear. Snow ran after him.

"COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT, NEAL LEOPOLD NOLAN! DON'T YOU DARE POOP ON YOUR SISTER'S CARPET!"

" _It'd be a good excuse for her to replace it_!" David called after.

"So, toilet training, huh?" Neal remarked while trying to decide what he thought of the 'Big Neal' thing. He really hoped that wasn't going to become his nickname.

"I can't even get my dog house broken," David groaned. "And if the dog's going on the carpet..."

"Why listen to Mom and Dad about the big scary toilet?" Neal laughed. "I guess it's scarier than a chamber pot or an outhouse."

"It's exhausting is what it is," said David. "Parenting a toddler isn't all what I imagined it would be. Of course, when I imagined it, both times, we were planning for parenting in a castle in The Enchanted Forest as rulers of a kingdom and here we are, a school teacher and a small town politician living on a farm. Which isn't a bad thing. But some things were a lot simpler back home. And child care was free. But, on the other hand, we didn't have Pop-Tarts and those are always an excellent bribe."

Neal grinned as he stirred the pot. "He does love his Emmy-Tarts. I think he loves Emma too. Regina says it's just that Anna starved him for attention and he's too young to get that there's two of them when only one's around."

"Probably," David agreed. "Anna tolerated him, but she wasn't affectionate. We just assumed it was Emma dealing with jealousy issues and didn't want to press her on it. She _was_ weirded out when she showed up here only to find her mother was nine months pregnant. And I think she does resent her brother a bit, even if she's better at hiding it than her sister. I just wish I knew the right thing to say or what to do to fix things for her... or with her," he admitted.

"Not sure there's a right thing," shrugged Neal. "I know you grew up without your father and had issues over that - believe me, I get that. But it's not the same as having no one. Me and Emma, we had pretty shitty childhoods. We didn't have homes, or when we thought we did, it got taken away - or we got taken from it. I guess you could say we bonded over that. But that doesn't mean Emma ever entirely let her so-called walls down around anyone. Thing is, I think she sometimes resents people caring about her. It brings up all the old memories of having no one who cared and wondering if it'll get taken away again. And also cause getting passed around for fourteen years like that made her think that maybe she doesn't deserve it. And I know my leaving just made it harder for her to get past that and see how worth it she is."

David put the last of the french toast in the oven and demanded suddenly, "So on that subject, what are your intentions toward my daughter?"

"My... intentions?" Neal returned, pausing in his beating.

"Yes, _intentions_ ," David told him. "You have _already_ hurt my daughter more than once. And while that may not have been intentional, you still chose some stranger's word over your love for each other. I'm not sure that exactly makes you worthy of her."

Neal frowned. He couldn't dispute that. But he could argue other points. "That why you and your wife basically told me to go screw myself when I asked for help getting back to Emma and Henry? Figured I wasn't worthy of your family motto because I messed up before? Or you figured I'd give up if it was too hard?"

"Maybe," David conceded, coolly.

Turning off the stove, Neal wondered if he should go get the man's sword instead to defend himself against the kitchen knives in the block right beside Emma's father. He'd pegged David for a protective parent the moment they awkwardly met on the docks what felt like an eternity ago now. He'd hoped, though, that after everything that included _dying_ that David would give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least some 'good guy' points in his favor. Neal recalled Regina's advice, though, that David's bark was worse than his bite.

"Then you don't know me very well," Neal finally answered. "Maybe all you see is a peasant-born thief, son of a spinner, who had more guts than wits who left Emma hanging with some loot and a kid," he allowed, refusing to let how much that inadequacy stung show in his voice or expression. "But I loved her more than anything. I wanted her to be happy. I didn't want my family baggage to get in the way of that. Yeah, it turned out my family baggage was the entire reason behind her so-called 'destiny', but I didn't know that then. All I knew was that I tended to bring bad luck in the way of dark magic into people's lives. I didn't want that making Emma's task even harder."

Shaking his head, Neal continued, "And whatever my intentions now, however I hurt her then, you really think you're in any place to be making demands or setting ground rules? You let a man you knew had raped and murdered for centuries, that was your grandson's step grandfather besides, openly seduce your daughter. But when I just asked for help to get back to her _and my son_ , you couldn't be bothered to help, Prince 'I will always find you' Charming.

"Maybe you're pissed that I didn't come rushing into town with August," Neal continued harshly, "and follow her around like a creep instead of recognizing that I hurt her, that I knew she wouldn't want to see me, especially when she was being thrown into this fiarytale mess. Or you think that combined with leaving in the first place it makes me a pussy that I gave Emma space when she said she didn't want to try starting over, respected her feelings _and her words_ , instead of acting like an entitled douchebag and stalking and harassing her until I broke down her walls or some bullshit and made her realize how in love with me she was," he scoffed.

Shaking his head, Neal admitted with a healthy dose of sarcasm, "So, fine, I'm not what apparently qualifies as the romantic hero type around here.. But I don't wanna be if homicidal pussy-grabbing perverts qualify. That's not the kind of romance I go for. You can think whatever you want about me and Emma when we met. That she was young and impressionable and I took advantage. But it's not true. She was probably way more mature than I was given how I ended up in this world with no education and my best prospects mopping floors and cleaning toilets. But as much as my father let me down and became a monster, he did made sure that I knew enough to treat a woman right. And as much as I resented my mother for what she did to me, I never treated any woman like shit or some prize, never took _Hook's_ advice on anything romance-related, because I knew better.

"I _respected_ Emma," Neal continued. "I _never_ pursued her like she was some prize I could earn or out of some delusion that we were meant to be. I didn't pursue her at all. We were partners in the universe dealing us shitty hands, working together to make it a bit better. We were _friends_. And we fell in love from that, not some magical adventure or eyes meeting across a ballroom. I thought that's something you and your wife would understand more than a 'meet cute' under a pile of corpses and being left to starve to death in a dungeon.

"I was a thief, yeah, but I tried to be a good man," he argued. "I wanted to find a way to get Emma out of that life, so she could just be the good person she was without doing bad to survive. And, yeah, I wanted to share that life with her, but that didn't seem like an option, so all that mattered was getting her out of the life we were living and into something better. I get that it wasn't. But I thought it would be. And it _haunted_ me everyday for twelve years to find out she went to jail. And it's haunted me _every day since she tracked me down_ that August screwed her over with that money so she had to give up our kid.

"I can't change those bad choices," Neal sighed, "but I can make better ones from here on out. So all you need to know is that I'm not gonna walk away this time unless Emma tells me to, which I'll respect instead of that sexist 'I know you're just afraid and hiding your true feelings and want me back' bullshit that Hook served up and it seems your other daughter apparently swallowed like his breakfast sausage," he scoffed crassly.

Neal went on, "I respect Emma. And if you've got a problem with me not being some knight in shining armor. Or even a rakish pirate trying to pretend he's turned into a prince, I don't care. Cause he's a prick that I'd rather be dead again than emulate that and anyone who needs to spout poetry or save damsels to play the romantic hero doesn't know what either of those words really mean. So maybe I'm not the best looking option. The gods wouldn't let me get the girl. But it's not about what they want anymore. And it's never been about what you want. It's what Emma wants. And I'm not gonna leave as long as Emma wants me here, cause her happiness is _her choice_ , not yours."

Crossing his arms, David retorted, "Are you done?"

"I guess so," Neal replied, awaiting some kind of heated rebuttal from David after his impassioned tirade.

Instead, David told him, "First, I don't care about your birth. I was a shepherd and no matter what titles I might have usurped from my brother who'd never have received them in the first place if his adoption was known, I'm really just a consort benefiting from a world that gave people more perspective on choosing their leadership than blood. So it would be rather hypocritical of me to judge you for being born a peasant when I was as well.

"Second, while I can't say it gives me warm and fuzzy feelings," David continued, "that you hurt my daughter... I won't pretend that I didn't want to castrate you when we met for what you did to Emma. And I know it would feel good to break your nose at least still. Time has passed and I've had more time to consider how much I hurt myself Emma by trusting the Blue Fairy and the spell her mother and I had cast before that, so I can extend that judgment only so far. _Which_ is the reason I didn't take my sword to Hook when it seemed Emma had taken a fancy to him."

"And the rest of it?" Neal challenged, trying to look like he really didn't give a shit while hating that he actually did and that this peasant-born prince consort could intimidate him with a spatula. Even if Emma's father was a peasant by birth, he figured every man wanted better for his daughter, and Neal couldn't see how he even close to measured up against Prince Charming.

David let out a sigh. "It was never some cruel intention to keep you and Emma apart. We certainly didn't prefer a dirty pirate winning her heart. But it seemed that was the life Emma was given. We thought she'd fulfilled her role as the savior. She could have an ordinary life and risking disrupting that seemed unfair at that time. And it went against everything I believed, never mind that I hated an ordinary life myself. But I've always known, deep down, for all the princess-ness that's ingrained in my wife by how she was brought up, her actual nature is to crave a quiet, uneventful, _normal_ life. The same thing Emma wants. The thing I thought she could have, with Henry, and all of the memories that would erase all of the regrets she has for giving him up. It wasn't right, of course. It was all based on a lie, and in the end, all of it just made things harder for everyone."

After a pause and lamenting shake of his head, David continued, "You may be a poor son of a spinner and robbed convenience stores and aren't looking to dawn a suit of armor, Neal, but I'd rather Emma be with someone 'ordinary' who respects her and puts her happiness first than someone 'extraordinary' who views her as an object to be won and pulls her away from her family.

"Emma was always on the verge of running," he reminded and amended, "so I suppose Snow and I, and perhaps everyone else, excused Anna's obsessive behavior with Killian away as Emma running to someone else to... take refuge from everything here in place of actually running from Storybrooke, which seemed the lesser of two evils... though we'd have rather she faced her fears than jumped into the deep end of a new relationship, obviously."

"Is that what you thought I'd do," Neal asked, curious, "if I found Emma in New York? Somehow win her back without her memories and just leave you all?"

"I don't know," sighed David. "Maybe. It was a number of things and an emotionally difficult time and I doubt any of us made good choices."

"I guess not," Neal conceded. "If I could go back, I'd change a lot of things. But all I can do is focus on making up for hurting Emma."

"Then we have that in common," David told him. "Fate or destiny or immortals playing games with our lives, whatever, you've made multiple sacrifices for my daughter's happiness, and whether ill-informed or not, given my own mistakes in that regard, I think it's the intention that matters."

"Ah... thanks." Neal relaxed a little, but couldn't quite manage a genuine smile.

"Look, Neal," David told him. "All I can say is that Emma was given a happy ordinary life and we wanted her to be able to live that without being pulled into a mess she couldn't untangle. Then Anna warmed up to the royalty, pageantry, and chivalry of our world and because that made us happy, made us worry less that we'd lose her, we overlooked those personality changes that should have made it obvious she wasn't the daughter we saw off to fight the Wicked Witch.

"Emma... I don't think she's ever going to feel comfortable with her birthright," he considered, "and even if, I'll admit, on some level that's disappointing, because it's something we can't share with her the way we wanted to when we learned Snow was pregnant - it's not our call. And there are things we couldn't share with Anna either that we hope we can with Emma, so maybe that balances out in a way we didn't expect, a way that works out for everyone.

"We just want both of our daughters to live in a way that makes them feel most fulfilled, most content. So if living in this dumpy little house with the son of a spinner can give Emma at least a bit of that ordinary life she dreamed about back when you were teenagers, if it means she can find the happiness she wants _and_ without straying too far from the fairytale insanity that constitutes her family, I think we can find some common ground.

"I just really hope you do convince Emma to do something about the furnace, the paint, and the wiring," David said as the knob on the stove sparked.

"I'll definitely try. She is stubborn, though," Neal replied with a small laugh of relief.

"Hmm, her and her sister... and her mother," David agreed. "Unlike her sister, Emma usually is more stubborn about things that matter outside of herself, though. I wish I'd been a little bit more aware of that early on."

"Yeah, she is," Neal agreed. "That's one of the things I love about her. She never had a family growing up, rarely felt like anyone cared. More like the universe was crapping on her for no reason. But it's still her nature to fight for anyone who needs help - because it's right, whether she gets rewarded for it or not. That's why I wanted so badly to give her a different life. She stole because it was the only way she could get by, but she didn't have the heart of a thief."

"No, she has the heart of a princess," David agreed with a smile. "And she's given that heart to you. So protect it. Don't break it. And we'll get along all right," he concluded, holding out a hand.

"I'll do my best," Neal answered. "I can't guarantee one hundred percent that we're going to live happily ever after until we're old and gray... or grayer in my case, anyway. Which maybe isn't the answer you were looking for, but I don't plan on giving up if it's hard. I know we've got a lot of shit to get through, pain that I'm partly responsible for."

Shaking his head, he explained, "Thing is, Emma sort of put me back together. I still was sort of broken from everything in Neverland when we met, unable to settle anywhere, afraid of my own shadow even if I'd never admit it. She was broken too, from the crap she got in the system, from Ingrid, from the streets. But our relationship is special because of that. We were both broken and alone and needed someone to believe we mattered. Most people will never know the pain we did, but they'll also never know how awesome it is to have that missing piece be filled. And I'll fight for that, for Emma never doubting that she matters. Not because she's a princess or a savior or even a kick-ass sheriff. Just because she's _Emma_."

"That's all I ask," David agreed.

"It better be," came Emma's interruption, shuffling in still wearing the very ugly kitten patterned flannel pajamas her mother got her for Christmas. "And there better not have been any asking or giving permission to court me, or I will kick both of your asses. I won't stand for that arcane medieval bullshit."

Directly to her father, she said, "I love you. But if you start talking about dowries and primogeniture and all that crap, I will have to fire you. And make you wear these pajamas and take a picture of you in them and take out an editorial in the paper with it. Also, you're burning the bacon."

"Shit!" David groaned, quickly removing it from the griddle. "I would never consider it my place to act as a gatekeeper for your-"

"Vagina?" Emma smirked and he glowered.

"I was going to say 'heart'. And don't be silly. You look adorable in those!"

"If I was five!" Emma groaned.

"Well, it'll make your mom happy that you're wearing them," David told her. "And I seem to remember you owning a pair of bunny slippers when you lived with Mary Margaret and being very distraught when she accidentally killed them in a tragic washing-machine-related accident. She actually spent one of our dates crying about it."

"Your elicit extramarital affair dates, you mean," Emma pointed out.

"Smart ass," David scoffed and ambushed her into a hug. "I'm glad you're okay." Then pulled away and added sternly, "But you should have called!"

"Sorry."

"You'd better be!" Snow interjected, returning with the toddler in her arms... who now had what looked like blue sand in his hair. "And why are you hiding pixie sticks in your hamper?"

" _That's_ where they were?"

"And where your brother almost took a dump," Snow told her with a sigh.

"Just _almost_ right?" Emma replied, then answered the question, "It's been two years since I've done night patrol. I'm not a vampire like my sister. I need sugar to stay awake."

"SUGAR! SUGAR!" her brother chirped, eliciting a glare from both of her parents.

"Um... how about that breakfast then? Smells delicious!" Emma smiled. "Want me to make toast? Another batch of bacon?"

"No!" Snow swatted her hand away and handed her brother over instead. "We're having french toast. No toaster required - for you to break! And there's already enough bacon staying warm in the oven. The real kind, not that precooked kind you buy that you have to _take out of the plastic package_ before putting it in the microwave."

"Oh, come on! Those were two entirely separate inciden-ahhhhhh! What the fu-!" Emma gasped and hastily deposited her now whining brother into his booster seat like he was a dangerous animal. "He bit my boob! I thought you stopped breastfeeding him months ago!"

"Oh, honey, sorry," Snow winced at the wet spot on the front of her kitty pajamas. "Since he's been teething again it's helped calm him down and I have the same pair of pajamas..."

"Here, kiddo," David set a small plastic plate of mushy toast down.

"There better be some really good hot chocolate," Emma grumbled, rubbing her breast.

"Oh, don't be Grumpy's twin!" Snow scolded. "The sun's out, there's sleigh rides around the stables..."

"Um... I was stabbed yesterday, so..."

"So next time you will be more careful and call for backup and be able to enjoy a sleigh ride with us," Snow told her, handing her a cup of cocoa. "Now drink your hot chocolate and eat your breakfast, and then it's back to bed to consider all of the fun things you could be doing today if you hadn't been so reckless in trying to prove what a good sheriff you are. What if you'd landed face down and suffocated, Emma? What if some animal attack you?"

"Okay, okay!" Emma groaned. "I get it. I should probably like... hire a deputy or something so I have back-up the next time Dad has to take a day off to come down from a magical acid trip."

"Ha ha," David grumbled, setting the serving plate down while Snow took over giving everyone bacon.

Henry returned then looking a bit glum and covered from head to toe in yellow feathers. "Not. One. Word."

Emma bit back a giggle that earned her a glare from her son. "Oh, come on! You deserve it for giving it to your dad. It'll start to wear off soon. Just try not to molt in the food," she joked while grabbing a bottle of maple syrup.

Henry just groaned and tried to sip his hot chocolate without spilling it on his plumage.

The table ended up rather crowded, the breakfast nook on the seriously cramped side compared to The Loft or Anna's kitchen, and it was probably as far from a royal breakfast as one could get if Emma's Wish World memories were accurate, but neither of those mattered with Henry sitting to her right (even looking like a small Big Bird) and Neal to her left while her parents passed around serving dishes and her brother squealed a happy "Emmy!" when throwing his bacon at her. It sounded a bit like "mommy" and her heart swelled a little, her hand going to her stomach beneath the table as she realize that a year from now there would be a little girl in that spot... probably throwing bacon at her also, but that was okay, because she did really love bacon.

Nothing was set in stone, of course. Things could go wrong. That vision of the future might not happen. But for the first time since that fateful day in Portland, Emma felt optimistic about the future. Maybe Tallahassee wasn't an unattainable dream, after all, and maybe a weird little town in Maine full of fairytale characters would turn out to be a better place to make it happen than a swampy city not nearly as close to the ocean as she'd been lead to believe by a cartoon map.

Neal caught her expression as the table was cleared, "I know that look."

"Yeah?"

"Hope you don't lose it this time," Neal told her. "You deserve a home that's not gonna disappear."

"So do you," Emma insisted. "So let's make sure this one sticks around and we don't have to miss it."

"Probably should get the wiring fixed then so it doesn't burn down," Neal quipped, adding, "Also, your kitty pajamas really _are_ adorable."

Emma blushed and kicked his shin under the table, hissing, "Shut up, _Baelfire_."

Her brother suddenly let out a chortle as he stuck a pixie stick he'd been hiding somewhere up his nose.

"Oh, no! You better not have inhaled all that sugar, young man!" Snow moaned.

"SHIT!" the toddler squealed, trying to run away.

"Just your typical Charming Family breakfast," groaned Henry with a shake of his head, feathers falling into his syrup... just before the feral car in the garage started beeping.

"We should probably do something about the collapsed garage and the angry quasi-sentient car trapped under it," Neal considered as he took his plate to the sink. Typical around here was apparently a bit on the weird side with troublesome siblings, jinxed coffee cups, and possessed automobiles. But it beat ogres, workhouses, and Lost Boys by a mile.

* * *

"That went better than expected," Snow remarked, looking out at the snowy landscape on the drive to Storybrooke Farms. Neal was snoozing between her and David, his sugar high run out. "I half expected Emma to kick us out, especially after you laid into her boyfriend like that."

David winced and groaned out, "You heard that, huh?"

"I was expecting it, but hoping you'd curb your overprotective fatherly impulses," Snow replied. "I know you went easy on Hook because you were afraid of losing our daughter after what was said and done in Neverland and her inclination to return to New York, and we both struggled with balancing that and the frustrations over her devoting more and more time to Hook. But I really don't think we have to worry about that here, David.

"Emma doesn't have that clinginess and desperate need to please like her sister," she explained, "and Neal certainly doesn't seem remotely narcissistic or neurotic. If Emma chooses to distance herself from us, it's our fault, not his. Neal just wants Emma to be with her family and I'm sure he's not intending to just insert himself into that family either or glue himself to Emma's side."

Frowning, David considered, "Maybe if he had, she wouldn't have gotten stabbed."

Snow rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be like that. Emma wants her independence to prove herself at her job. Obviously, it was a miscalculation in that instance, but you know she would have been angry if Neal had gone behind her back and followed her and been far less willing to forgive that than her sister is that sort of offense. And if that _had_ been Anna and Hook, either he would have been stabbed instead and she'd have gone on a ridiculous quest to save him, endangering others, or, even more likely, she would have still gotten stabbed having to save him from getting stabbed because they were both distracted arguing about him never listening to her and disrespecting her ability to take care of herself and do her job."

"I suppose you have a point," David had to concede, turning onto the dirt road that lead to the town stables and commercial farm where they'd taken their son to pick out pumpkins a few months back, the toddler disappointed that his sister had canceled joining them for the family outing (as she did for many). Naturally, Anna had no pressing other engagement as Henry had shown up to inform them grouchily that his mother was too busy joining Hook for his last minute change of plans to go sailing.

David had tried not to be ticked off about that. But he had been. Even after two years together, one married, Hook continued to unapologetically disregard Anna whenever she told him not to interfere with something, whether personal or job related, and he consistently made up last minute "romantic" outings that interfered with family plans like it was some kind of competition. Even in a work capacity, Hook displayed a flagrant disrespect for Anna's authority that 90% of the time had resulted in one or both of them or some innocent person being injured; which had lead to a number of those current lawsuits.

No matter what Emma accused David of being, he certainly didn't think he suffered the extreme sort of misogyny that Hook did, and was probably expected after 300 years as a pirate and was not going to be easily cured if at all, especially when Anna put up with it, always accepting his "I'm just worried about you" excuses. That probably wasn't even a lie, just something David knew _his_ wife would not put up with and had hoped his daughter wouldn't either after meeting too many damsels who should have been able to take care of themselves. He respected Princess Abigail for being a tough woman who had her own opinions and fought for the love of a knight rather than waiting around for some prince or king her father had wanted to marry her off to instead. He had little respect for Princess Aurora who seemed, frankly, spineless and good for little more than twirling her hair and having babies... which made trying to negotiate with her and Philip a real pain in the ass!

David hadn't wanted a daughter of his to be a Sleeping Beauty type. Sure, he'd woken Snow from a Sleeping Curse, but it was always a back-and-forth between them, never one just saving the other all the time. It was a partnership. He'd fallen in love with Snow because she was so independent-minded and balked at needing or even wanting a man to protect her. They'd always fought as equals, having each other's backs openly and honestly and stepping aside for some battles that needed to be, or one wanted to, fight alone. Emma had seemed like that sort of person, but then Hook had come into her life and suddenly she clung to him constantly, let him cling to her, and put up with his disregard for her feelings on those personal battles and what that said about his own personal beliefs about women and relationships. But... he made her happy.

Only, he didn't, of course. And now Emma was pissed off about what enabling that co-dependency said about David and his wife's personal beliefs about women and relationships. So, he knew he had to tread carefully with his more emotionally well-rounded daughter than he had with her sister who seemed more prone toward just mirroring other's emotions to make up for what she lacked and letting things slide when she had no idea how to react.

He _had_ intended to bite his tongue at breakfast and just try to feel Neal out as he'd never really gotten the chance to do previously. But that fatherly guilt complex had gotten the best of him!

If David was being honest, his guilt complex was more... complicated than that.

He'd been proud to be Sheriff (and co-Sheriff) with his daughter. But she'd hired Hook as her deputy and being around them was just... awkward. It had made sense to leave the department and take the alderman position, something that took up less time after buying the farm and with a baby to raise.

Only, it didn't make sense for everyone else. Because that department devolved into a cesspool of corruption and police brutality that reduced crime in town only because the residents were terrified of Sheriff Swan-Jones and Deputy Jones and believed that if they ever spoke out about the illegal assert forfeiture, physical violence, false arrest and imprisonment, withholding of Miranda Rights, and other prisoner abuses, that both the political authority (Regina) and the moral authority (David and Snow) would side with them, so even if Abigail was willing to prosecute, City Hall and "The Charmings" would win.

By proxy, David had become a villain in the eyes of some, or at the very least just incompetent and either blind or apathetic to the tactics his daughter and son-in-law used to keep the peace. He was disappointed in Anna and Hook, obviously, but he was more disappointed in himself. After all, it was in both of their natures to be.. well... selfish assholes. Expecting them to have run the department like Graham had wanted before his death, like Emma had promised after being elected, would be like blaming a caged wolf for biting your arm off if you stuck it between the bars. A pirate and an "Evil Twin" were not going to be the moral authority in Storybrooke, or even a small sliver of it, and even before knowing about Anna's affliction, it had been pushing it to think his daughter could cure Hook of his violent and criminal tendencies when all evidence to that point had been of Hook's violent and criminal tendencies rubbing off on her instead.

David sighed as he parked the truck in the muddy lot.

The lawsuits now were piling up and that he'd been so blind to all of it for almost a year, never mind blind to his daughter literally being someone else, and that didn't exactly make David feel like a success as a father or as "Prince Charming".

Fathers were like shepherds: they were supposed to protect their flock... er... children. Rulers were supposed to be like shepherds too, and even if David was more of a politician in this world, he'd wanted to be the good kind who fought for his people's interests. He'd quit the Sheriff's Department to devote more time to that cause, gave up something he'd enjoyed (apart from his daughter's and her husband's unbearable 24/7 canoodling) for the greater good as Regina was working to restructure the town in a way that better reflected where they'd come from without sacrificing the progress this world had given them. But it actually might have had the opposite of his intention given what Anna and Hook had done.

It didn't sit well to know that there was now a large group of people who feared/disliked/distrusted his family as much as if not more than Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold... or that there were still others like "King" George who were trying to use that to their advantage to either create chaos or some sort of coupe the way Arthur had done... and using some of his lingering followers besides. And it added to David's feeling of shame that Emma now had all of that working against her when she'd earned her job through her actions and the vote of the people - unlike him or Anna or Hook. Before she'd only had to win over a portion of the town and now she had all of her old supporters who'd lost trust in their family, plus the Second Curse and after immigrants that had only known their Sheriff as selfish and shallow, treating the job like either a hassle or a novelty.

David ahd watched that shift in attitude happen, yet he'd done nothing about it. He'd turned a blind eye, found a "valid" excuse to shift his responsibilities so he wouldn't have to feel so uncomfortable every day watching something he'd loved be destroyed, and even worse, by someone he loved but increasingly didn't recognize any of the qualities that made him love her. He'd been a coward, plain and simple. He'd run away from seeing what his daughter's life choices, ones he'd supported, had turned her into - or revealed about her true nature - and it unsettled and at times disgusted him, so it was easier to just leave and pretend there were no greater consequences. But there were. To his family _and_ to his kingdom.

David knew that he had failed as a father and as a ruler more times than he'd succeeded, but the former stung more given how much he'd wanted to be better than he long thought his father to be. And now it nagged at him constantly: what if he was also too late fixing his mistakes regarding his children? What if he ended up failing his daughters in the way Robert had, unintentionally, failed his sons? Would Emma be left embittered over a father who wasn't there to help and protect her for twenty-eight years and then utterly failed when he finally was? Would Anna be forever burdened by a curse and bound to people who enabled and took advantage of her curse without her being able to see that she deserved to be better than what magic made her?

"Sweetie, are you coming?"

Blinking away the cobwebs in his mind, David found his wife already out of the car, their groggy child that hadn't yet been ruined in her arms.

"Yeah, sorry. Thinking about that deposition," David answered, which wasn't a complete lie, and unbuckled his belt.

On the walk to the sleigh, David wondered if the horses were from their kingdom. And did they enjoy their job pulling people around a previous pumpkin patch all day even if they were treated better than Neal's old carriage horse? Would they rather be loitering around in the field, looking for grass or back at the stables munching on oats and hay and doing whatever horses did when people weren't conscripting them into some service?

Maybe that was an apt metaphor. He felt a bit like a draft horse lately... and wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing or neither at all. He'd been born a farmer and hard labor like his parents before him and their parents before them and that's what he'd known for the first three decades of his life. Becoming a "prince" should have been a complete change of lifestyle, but it just felt like he'd gone from pulling plows, covered in mud, to taking tourists around Central Park in a fancy carriage festooned with flowers. And, to be honest, he enjoyed the mud-covered version more. It felt familiar and natural, surrounded by things he'd always known even in a strange world, while even back in his home world he'd felt on edge and out of place in castles, on thrones, advising on military matters and the like.

Whatit came down to was really quite simple: he _hated_ his job.

Well, maybe he didn't _hate_ it. But it was so _fake_ and there were so many hoops to jump through and airs to put on and he wasn't good at any of that, didn't have the patience for it like Snow did. But he tried. For her. She'd just gotten a promotion to principal and she couldn't take time away from that for politics while he'd been growing disenchanted with his "work environment" and running a farm allowed time to meet with their constituents, many of them other farmers. It had made sense. He just hadn't thought it would be so... _soul destroying_.

"Horsies!" Neal's squeal pulled David again into the moment and brought a smile to his face. Not everything in his life was so bad. He had a sweet little boy and a wonderful wife. And who didn't love a sleigh ride?

* * *

"Sleigh rides are stupid," Emma commented to Neal while ordering Chinese for an early dinner since she'd slept through lunch. "Ingrid dragged me and the other kids on one once. I think someone fed the horse Beef-A-Rino."

"Yeah, sitting behind a horse isn't always fun," Neal agreed, having returned a few minutes earlier from a day of dropping Henry off with Regina, lunch at Granny's with his father, Belle, and Gideon - who thankfully did not try to poop anywhere but in his diaper or snort sugar packets - and checking out some want ads since he didn't plan on "helping out" at his father's shop full time for both of their sanities.

"Sitting _on_ a horse isn't much fun either," Emma argued, crinkling her nose. "I don't know how people got on without cars."

There was honking muffled through the wall of the house and she amended, " _Non cursed cars_."

"I'll talk to Michael Tillman about... ah.. _Christine_ tomorrow," Neal told her. "I might do some mechanic work at Marine Garage so-"

A loud gong sound made Neal jump and spin around to find a swirl of red smoke in the livingroom. The Dragon appeared with a large plastic bag of Chinese take-out boxes.

"That'll be twenty-seven fifty," the old wizard stated as Neal started at him and Emma got her money.

"Hey, wait a minute," Neal croaked out, "I know you! You're the dry cleaner that shrunk my scarf!"

"Ah, yes," the old man nodded. "Side job to finance my apothecary after your fiancée stole my savings in Hong Kong. In retrospect, I should not have kept it under my mattress."

Emma told him as she handed over a wad of bills and added, "There better not be dirty pirate-related fortune cookies this time."

"Of course, of course," insisted The Dragon. "It was force of habit from your brother-in-law tipping me generously to custom-make fortunes with dirty limericks from his favorite sea chanteys. I am offering a Valentine's Day discount for early pre-ordering-"

"I don't want your smutty cookies!" Emma cut him off.

"Very well. Enjoy your food and please order from Dragon Express again!"

"Yeah, yeah," Emma replied, "Happy New Year, you old weirdo."

"And to you as well, kitten-pajama-woman!"

The Dragon vanished the way he'd arrived, leaving Emma annoyed but more hungry than annoyed from the growl of her stomach. And when Neal started laughing, she found it contagious, at least until her sides started to ache.

"This town is weird," Neal stated the obvious and grabbed the Kung Pao chicken before sitting on the couch in front of _Good Evening Storybrooke_.

"Yeah, but it's home, apparently," Emma shrugged while arranging the boxes on the coffee table. After a minute she announced, "So, I'm thinking of getting my GED."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Emma shrugged. "I was sort of half-assed working on it in prison, but gave up after Henry was born what with the broken parole thing. I thought about it after I took the deputy job. I mean, it was embarrassing that I didn't have one and I figured I was just lucky Graham didn't do a background check considering Regina'd already outed my criminal history. There was never time, though, becoming Sheriff and then in Regina's fake memories I didn't break my parole and I finished the classes. And Anna obviously didn't care. So... this is really the first break I've had to think about it seriously, and I want to set a good example for both of our kids, especially Henry right now. I worry that he's not applying himself as much as he should. Not that I'll have a lot of time between work and magic lessons and family drama that's going to include childbirth classes," she concluded with a sigh and dug into a box of garlic shrimp.

"You wanna do one of those?" Neal asked a bit surprised.

"Why not? I didn't before and that _definitely sucked_. I mean, do I want to be surrounded by pregnant prissy princesses? No. But maybe there's like a Lamaze class for peasants or something."

"I imagine the majority of the town has their own routines down, yeah," Neal mused, "even if you're family's oblivious to it all."

"I've kinda gotten that impression the last few months," Emma agreed. "I mean, it's not like no one ever gave Anna lip about it, but it all went in one ear and out the other with her. Maybe it'd even help with the royal-peasant relations or something. Or I'll be accused of using Lamaze as a PR stunt. Being a princess really sucks sometimes!"

"Did Princess Emma of Wish World ever say that?" Neal chuckled and she rolled her eyes.

"No. She was pretty low-key and agreeable. Kind of a doormat, actually. Like Anna whenever Hook berates her, but with everything in her life. I suppose she was more Anna than me, maybe. Either way, I'm guessing either you must have had a really boring-ass Wish version of yourself to have fallen for that doofus or they drugged her after she got knocked up out of wedlock or something. It's all kind of hazy and hard to judge objectively since according to her memories, flower picking is _awesome_!"

Neal made an expression of mock offense. "You don't think flower picking is _awesome_?"

"Well, it didn't help that I had to tag along for my sister having her metaphorical flower picked in a field of Nimue's evil flowers while she was _the Dark One_. Or huffing those stupid pixie flowers while having a psychotic break over being separated from her boyfriend. Not to mention Anna's awful first wedding with the tacky flower arches out of a 1980s soap opera."

Pouring a little up of shiracha on her chow mein, Emma lamented, "I used to love going up on the roof of that building and watching the sunset or the stars and the sunrise after a night patrol, you know? Before breaking the Curse it was a place to get away, to be alone and just think. Which my mother knew. So, of course she picked that spot for Anna's tacky as fuck wedding and ruined yet another thing that made me happy.

"Which just makes all of this suck even more," she sighed, "that my family took one of the few places in town that was mine and turned it into that shitshow to walk an impostor down the aisle, a damsely, clingy, dress-wearing, burserker Emma Swan that everyone likes better."

"I'm sure there are some people here who like you better than your sister, Emma," Neal encouraged. "Like the ones suing the Sheriff's Department, for instance."

"Yeah, okay, _them_ ," Emma conceded, "but not my parents and their circle of friends. To them my sister's like the debutante and I'm the weird goth sister. And even though she picked some loser douchebag for a husband, she still agreed to all their frilly, royal crap stuff, and traditions and customs and beliefs - and nepotism, apparently - is what matters the most."

Frowning, she poked and her shrimp and continued, "I think most people around here saw Anna as my transformation from a closed-off orphan broken by the wrongness of this world who just needed the love of a man to fix her, her make her into their medieval version of strong femininity, which seems to be acting like a weak-ass misogynist bitch.

"My mother says they just don't understand me or where I'm coming from even with their curse memories. Maybe that's true. But then _she_ doesn't either," Emma complained. "It's _lonely_ not being understood."

Neal smiled sadly in sympathy. "Yeah, it is. But, hey, we can be misunderstood together. I don't care what anyone else around here thinks. I'm all for you _not_ turning into your sister's version of you. That was... hard to watch."

"Yeah, harder watching it in person," Emma grimaced before amending, "I'm sorry that you thought that was me, Neal, that you blamed yourself for my changing and caused yourself even more pain by trading the afterlife you'd earned for what you thought would make that skank happy."

"I won't pretend it didn't hurt," Neal conceded. "One more thing to blame myself for, screwing up your happiness. I wanted you to be the best version of you. I didn't think you could be sticking with me."

Emma reached over and took his hand. "I know your parents and Hook messed you up, but you deserve to be happy as much as anyone, Neal. I'm just sorry you thought I'd disrespected you and Tallahassee and was a crap mother who didn't keep either of those promises to put Henry first. And even if I hate that you carried blame for something you didn't t do, at the same time it means a lot that you _didn't_ like the person you thought I became when everyone else saw all of that awfulness as the best version of me, healed by going home to cook my verbally abusive and emotionally manipulative recovering alcoholic murdering rapist husband dinner in a flowery dress and lacy apron."

"Or just the lacy apron," Neal shuddered. "All my French maid fantasies are ruined now."

Snorting, Emma considered, "There isn't much that hasn't been ruined for me by those two inconsiderate, self-serving assholes. Totally fake self-serving assholes," she continued. "Everything about them is so transparently fake, no matter how they and everyone else paints it. Like Anna sashaying down an aisle dragging a skirt poofier than my duvet and clutching a dainty bouquet of perfectly cascading snowdrops symbolizing _purity_ was a total _joke_."

Emma snorted and amended with a slight smirk, "At least she let picked pleasing Mom over ruining more for me. But on the other hand, it would have been funny if she got a rash from dandelion goo..."

"Hey, I was trying to be romantic on a budget!" Neal argued with a smile. "And you seemed like more of a daisies and dandelion than a roses girl."

"What does that mean? I'm an invasive noxious weed instead of a thorny but sweet smelling bloom?" Emma countered with a challenging brow.

Neal groaned. "Oh, don't try and make it into a thing! I just meant not into fancy stuff and clichés. How was I supposed to know you'd be allergic to that white sap stuff? And you gotta admit, it did make a memorable moment!"

"Well, it was memorable for that old lady in the park bathroom!" Emma snorted more fondly than she had at the time, remembering that conversation with Neal as she'd been trying to scrub off the weed goo.

 _"It won't come off! It's too sticky and there's no soap!"_

 _"I didn't tell you to take it out of the condom."_

 _""It broke and spilled all over my lap! What were you thinking?"_

 _""I didn't want it to get limp. and-"_

An old lady had then walked out of a stall looking scandalized and they'd ended up having a good laugh after realizing what she'd thought they were talking about. She wasn't laughing a few months later when she found out she was pregnant and it occurred that the broken dandelion vase condom was probably a sign to throw that box out and steal some new ones.

"You know," Emma considered with a smile, "if it hadn't been for that shitty box of defective condoms you stole, Henry probably wouldn't have been conceived."

"Yeah... sorry about that," Neal winced.

"Back then I'd have punched you in the face," she told him, "but now I'll just settle for eating your fried rice and making you carry the pillow to all the stupid childbirth classes. And don't think the store where my mother got these pajamas doesn't also have kitty print pillow cases, Cassidy!"

"I think I can live with that," he laughed.

They ate in silence for a few minutes when there was a sound loud crash and clatter outside, not at all like a gong, nor like an angry car.

"Must be raccoons in the garbage again," Emma grumbled getting off the couch. "I swear, most of my night patrols involve shouting at furry creatures fucking in trash cans!"

In the kitchen, Emma turned on the back porch light and there was more clattering. She opened the door and hollered, "Hey! Scram, you filthy varmints!"

There was more clattering and something furry and trash-coated backed out of an overturned garbage can. Only it wasn't a family of raccoons. It was one animal that she first thought was a lynx - were there lynx in Maine? - until she realized it had a stubby _armored_ tail, a humanoid whiskered and furry eared head (with what looked like some healing scratches on its face), and little dragon-like wings. It dropped the squashed, brown-spotted banana it was chewing on and mewed like a cat.

"Neal," Emma managed after a moment to regain her wits, " _did you bring home a baby manticore_?"

* * *

"Henry, we are not keeping a manticore! It could be dangerous!" Emma exclaimed, though her argument seemed futile when the cub was excitedly chasing Regina's conjured magic sparkles around the livingroom like a house cat chasing a laser pointer.

Regina had been Emma's first call and then her parents had joined in, David bringing Dr. Little from the Pet Shelter who'd examined the manticore cub and declared it malnourished and put a salve on wounds from a likely snare trap. It had made up for the lack of nutrition by feasting on Emma's garlic shrimp while Little was tending to the wounds and then made itself at home getting mud all over the carpet and chewing on the potted plants.

"She's kinda cute, you gotta admit," Neal insisted.

"Do you want to clean a litterbox for a cat _that_ size let alone a grown-up one?" Emma countered, "because I don't know what diseases and parasites these things carry, but I am not doing it. Plus the hairballs! We've got a horse. That's enough."

"Technically, _I_ have your horse," David reminded.

"How did she even _get_ here?" Snow asked.

"And why is she _pink_?" asked Henry.

"My brother had a stuffed one in his mancave," David recalled. "Not sure if he had a thing for pink animals or the sluts he bedded did, or just because it was rare, but I had it disposed of with the rest of his trophies. I assumed it was some accident in the potion brewing used for the insemination."

"The what?"

"Manticores and other freakish creatures created by the gods are unisex and thus cannot reproduce without the intervention of potions that result in the laying of magical eggs. Much like Dwarfs, I suppose," Regina explained. "There is a long history of magical beast blood alchemists that have worked to preserve the species."

"Why? If they're unnatural?"

"So rich people can hunt them, obviously," Regina stated, amending, "and that seems to have changed at some point, anyway since there has clearly been insemination since the Dark Curse of the non-interventional variety. I'd say it's more likely a sign of the genetic incompatibilities of the creatures. Either way, at least it does seem to result in a far more well-tempered mutant than that chimera."

"You'd be bad-tempered too if you had an extra heads on your back and your ass," Neal snorted.

"I'd be bad-tempered if I was pink and undersized and easily entertained by sparkles too. Snow, on the other hand, would probably find herself _adorable_."

"Hey!" Snow huffed, "that's mean. Probably true, but _mean_! And how _is_ she here?" she repeated.

"The wardrobe portal in the mansion, obviously," shrugged Regina. "It must have preceded us through when we got distracted by those vampire bats."

"You said Whale used medicine to reduce the fatal effects until the poison worked its way out of Emma's system!" David reminded.

"Yes, well, I lied. That Horner kid jabbed Emma with too much for her own magic to fight it off. And the antidote is manticore blood, which I didn't exactly have lying around and neither did Gold. It goes bad rather quickly."

Snow frowned in Emma's direction. "You really almost _died_ yesterday and you didn't say anything!"

"Because I knew you guys would make a big deal out of it!" Emma shot back. "It's over. I'm fine. I screwed up and learned my lesson. Can we focus on the mythological creature using my favorite chair as a scratching post!"

"That chair came with the house."

"That doesn't make it not my favorite!"

"Em's right," Neal interrupted, "we need to figure out what to do. And I really hope one option is not taking it back to Three-Headed-Chimera Island, cause one trip was enough for me."

"No, that would be cruel anyway," David shook his head. "Poachers obviously got her off the island. Like I said, the pink ones were prized trophies back in the day and they must still be. Besides, like Little said, malnourishment suggests she was thrown out of the nest early and had to fend for herself, which probably made it easier for the poachers."

"True," Snow agreed. "And without any game warden, there's very little chance a manticore like this would reach adulthood, and she'd definitely never find a mate. It would be a lonely, probably short life back there. We can't subject her to that. She's too adorable!"

"If we can't keep her or send her back," Henry stated the obvious, "then we have to find her a good home here."

"Who would want a pink, deformed runt of a manticore that likes bananas and balls of yarn?" snorted Regina. " _She_ might be tiny compared to even a normal-sized cub and better tempered, but Emma is right about the house-training matter. _You_ ," she directed at David, "can't even manage that with the pet you have. And unless you want a giant cat encouraging your son to crap in his sandbox while peeing on the carpet like your dog..."

"Regina does have a point," Snow winced at that. " _We_ can't keep a manticore, David. She'd probably eat the chickens! Or get mangled by the rooster for trying to eat the chickens," she reconsidered, watching the cub rub up against the couch while purring loudly.

"Or," Regina amended, "get shot and stuffed by one of your crazy neighbors, and I don't mean my sister. But possibly also my sister whose pastime of sitting on her front porch with a shotgun is probably the only reason they haven't rustled all your animals."

David pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, _we_ can't take a manticore. But there has to be someone with a big enough yard far enough from any... political disedents who'd be willing."

"There are a few small agricultural farms on the well side of the valley," Regina considered, that being the southwestern side where the "wishing well" formed and the Dark Curse came through from The Enchanted Forest. "Perhaps they have some barn mice in need of hunting. Assuming vegetarianism isn't one of this thing's mutations."

"I think the correct term would be herbivorism," Neal corrected. "And she's not a thing."

"Don't tell me, you had lunch with your step-mother who ordered a big salad," snorted Regina, "and Granny griped that she has no big salads on the menu but could provide to small salads and Belle then asked if she could get them in one big soup bowl and then there was a whole thing about avocados."

"So... do you just sit at Granny's eavesdropping on other people?" Neal wondered.

"That was my sole entertainment for twenty-eight years. Old habits die hard. And it still provides occasional entertainment," she shrugged. "In the grand scheme of my schemes and crimes, listening in on other people's meal-related business is a rather tiny offense."

David snapped his fingers. "I think I know just the someone!"

* * *

Which was how Emma found herself in the cab of her father's pickup, squeezed between David and a very excited manticore cub that had its head stuck out the window in the frigid winter breeze. She wasn't even sure how she got roped into accompanying her father other than her mother did not want to get pink fur all over her sweater... No that wasn't true. Faux laser pointer magic was the only thing that could lure that creature into the car, Regina refused to get pink fur on her clothes, and Emma smelled like garlic shrimp.

"I thought it was supposed to be part cat?" Emma complained, getting hit in the face by a wagging tail for the tenth time. She was going to end up with a black eye!

"Some cats like riding in cars," shrugged David. "Australian mist cats also like to play fetch and... what?" he frowned at her look. "I worked at the Pet Shelter for three months. I'm more of a dog person, sure, but cats aren't bad. We had some on the farm to catch mice."

Speaking of farms, David pulled into a driveway that lead to a farm house. The truck's headlights illuminated a sign that read: **Tiny's Organic Co-Op: Think Big, Eat Small!**

Emma had completely forgotten about the shrunken giant to be perfectly honest. She hadn't seen him since before Pan's casting of the Curse. She did vaguely remember Regina mentioning that Anton had taken the bean plant from her office and tried to keep it alive to grow more beans in The Enchanted Forest, but it had died... possibly, they later suspected, because Zelena had actually killed it. She hadn't thought about him other than that conversation though since he didn't seem to ever be palling around with the Dwarfs.

"So... Anton runs an organic farm. I guess that makes sense with the whole vegan thing," Emma shrugged, sliding out the driver's side after her father to keep the manticore contained to the truck. "He have a falling out with the Dwarfs?"

"Conflict of philosophies, I think," David answered, retrieving a grocery bag from the bed of the truck. "Other than Sleepy, they're not really the quiet or meditative type. To be honest, I think Anton's been a bit depressed, especially now that the growing season is over, so he doesn't have people coming by to pick crops and pick up their orders. Storybrooke Farms gets all the post-harvest business with the pumpkins, turkeys, and sleigh rides."

"I guess the general Enchanted Forest approach to life is kind of pretty much the opposite of the whole quasi-Buddhist thing the Giants had going," Emma realized, "with all of the violence and lying and more violence."

David set the bag on the porch and knocked on the front door. After a few minutes Anton pulled it open looking like his heftier and bearded flannel twin.

"David... Emma, this is a surprise," the tiny giant remarked. "Police business?"

"No, Pet Shelter business, actually," David corrected. "We have a... unique animal in need of adoption and-"

"SPARKLES! NO!" Emma shouted upon spotting the manticore pushing hard against the window with her paws. In response the animal let out a loud, plaintive whine and began chewing on the steering wheel.

"Damn it!" David groaned. "Just let her out before she destroys my car!"

Emma sighed and magically opened the driver's side door. Immediately 'Sparkles' jumped out and bounded for the porch, pouncing on the bag from Bo Peep's butcher shop and yowling like she'd made a masterful catch.

"Is that...?" Anton began.

"An unusually small and pink manticore cub ripping to shreds a package of ground venison?" David concluded while 'Sparkles' feasted on one of the packages with obvious delight over her 'kill'. "She got accidentally pulled through a portal Regina opened near Midas' game preserve.. None of us really have the space or time to care for her. I realize you're a vegan and she'll need a diet of raw meat more than catching rabbits and squirrels that probably won't be cheap."

Sparkles finished licking the butcher paper and then trotted back into the yard and began digging in the snow and dirt. "What the heck is she-" Emma began but cut herself off when the manticore circled around her hole and squatted. "Man, I can't unsee that!"

"Er... maybe not the best first impression," David winced.

"Getting raw meat juice all over his front steps or taking a dump in his yard?" Emma groaned.

"Well, manticore droppings actually _do_ make fine fertilizer," said Anton. "Should help the bulbs I planted there come back quite nicely in the spring. And if there really is no one else equipped to take her... It wouldn't be ethical to send her back to her home when she'll almost certainly die there. It may be nature's way, but nature didn't exactly create her species. And she's here now. We've interfered and I wouldn't feel comfortable betraying that trust, particularly when she seems rather sweet."

Sparkles finished covering her potty hole and trotted back to the porch, sniffling around.

"So you'll take her?" David asked.

"I suppose I will, if Sparkles is agreeable."

"I suspect if you've got a bunch of overripe bananas laying around, she'll be your friend for life," said Emma.

As it turned out, Anton had something even better: over-ripe plantains. Also he'd apparently taken up knitting so there was lots and lots of yarn, which meant the pair hit it off famously. So they left the tiny giant and the tiny manticore to a late dinner of Cuban food and knitting with David promising to pick up more meat tomorrow along with a freezer... not that one needed a freezer in Maine in January.

"That's a good thing you did," Emma told her father as they stepped off the front porch into the driveway. The stars were out, the moon still nearly full, and everything looked tranquil with a new dusting of snow.

"I hope it is," David shrugged, hands in his pockets. "My brother killed his family. It can't be easy seeing someone who looks like the person you saw slaughter your entire family. So it's also sort of my fault that Cora brought him here to go Godzilla on Storybrooke. And it's definitely my fault that he planted that bean sprout _and_ they all got destroyed."

"Pretty sure Regina burned the field and Zelena killed the last plant."

"Well, yes," he conceded. "But it was my idea to start growing the beans without any thought that they'd be at risk. Anton didn't know this town, didn't know Regina would be a threat after her mother was killed, that she'd do something like strand everyone here and leave us to die..."

Shaking his head, he mused, "I still wonder sometimes why we never did leave that magic cuff on her and lock her up in the Asylum like we did with her sister... and why we let her out..."

"And walking my sister down the aisle to give her away to someone just as awful as either of them minus the magic?" Emma snorted.

"Yes, well," sighed David, "in my haste, my failure to protect the field, Anton wasn't able to keep his promise to his family. But he's too good to blame me for that - or at least to say anything. I may not be able to give that back. But if I can help Anton find some happiness here, as the last of his kind, then it's the least I can do to make up for both my failures and my brother's crimes."

Emma smiled and gave her a father a rare peck on the cheek, telling him, "You can be a really good guy when you're just being yourself, you know?"

"And the rest of the time?" David questioned. "When I'm being...?"

"Whoever else you're trying to be," Emma shrugged. "And whatever extra influence Mom's heart has, I suppose. I don't think whatever special goodness you had got _destroyed_ when Mom crushed your heart. Putting that much stock in hearts is dumb. But I've wondered if it make it harder for you to figure yourself out apart from Mom. You just seemed... different when I got back from New York. Not a lot different, but different enough."

David let out a sigh. "And then Anna's time travel changed both your mother and I even more. I've wondered that myself, sometimes, what sharing a heart really means. And though it means I'm alive, it's not something I wanted for you - or your sister as it turns out. I wouldn't tell her, but I was relieved when that failed. I didn't want to risk her dying one day, losing her, Henry losing her, because that dumb pirate stepped in front of a bus. It's impossible to know what will happen when Snow's heart gives out, if both of us will die. I've made my peace with that. But I am... relieved that should the worst happen before Neal is grown he has a sister now more capable of caring for him. I know you resent him a little, but I'd rather that than how Anna's apathy has hurt him."

"She wasn't very nice to him," Emma agreed, crossing her arms and leaning against the side of the truck. "And I don't exactly _resent_ my brother. I think it's more that I don't understand him. He's the product of a relatively happy home life, never wanting for anything. That was never me. The being overly cheerful. Or the throwing tantrums. And the fake memories I have of raising Henry don't really help since considering how Regina was as a parent, he was a quite, introverted kid. I'm glad my brother isn't, that he hasn't had his hope and innocence crushed before he can tie his shoes, that my sister and her jerk husband being shitty babysitters hasn't scared him for life. Maybe I'm a little worried that I might screw him up..."

"Leave that worrying to me," David insisted. "It's parents' jobs to worry about screwing up their children. Neal doesn't need another neurotic parent throwing their insecurity issues on him. He needs a sister to have his back, to try and minimize the damage your mother and I will do."

"I suppose I can manage that."

"I'm proud of you, you know," David said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "You're stronger than Anna in some ways - stronger than your mother and I too. I'm sorry that you have to be. But I'm proud that you are."

Flushing, Emma challenged, "If you think sweet-talking me will get me to forget that you laid into Neal earlier..."

"I didn't come over intending to," David offered, returning his hand to his pocket. "Your mother actually lectured me about it beforehand. Which wouldn't be the first time she has regarding my daughters' boyfriends. I suppose after managing to bite my tongue with Hook for two years and considering how that's turned out, I just couldn't keep it all bottled up. I want my children to be happy, but I also want them to be happy with people deserving of sharing that happiness with them."

"Neal deserves to be happy, whether it's with me or not," Emma told him. "He's always put others before himself and he's never expected any rewards. He got his father to make that elixir for you so you could leave Neverland," she reminded, "and never said anything more about it, while Hook repeatedly bragged and threatened how he was only helping you out, or even me with Henry, to get in my pants, and the moment that was off the table, he didn't want anything more to do with our family. But _Neal_ was the one you punished for still trying. I do get that you had issues with your father, but that went against everything I thought Prince Charming and Snow White stood for. And that's not easily forgiven."

"I understand that," sighed David. "I know I have to earn your trust back, Emma."

Emma let out a long sigh, looking up the stars, debating it back and forth in her head before announcing, "I'm pregnant."

Off her father's startled look, she continued, "You should know. You're back at the department. Just... please don't tell Mom. I know you don't like keeping things from her, but I just can't deal with her... excitement right now."

"O...kay," David croaked out, blinking owlishly at her.

Emma groaned. "Look, I know this isn't great timing. And I'm sure you're less than thrilled that I got unintentionally knocked up out of wedlock _again_. You're getting another bastard grandkid, which probably doesn't help your standing with those traditionalist nutjobs. And I'm not having a shotgun wedding to remedy that or any personal beliefs you or Mom have on the subject - which is another reason not to tell her. I don't have time for her constantly hounding me about nursery themes, baby showers, and vowing my eternal love in front of a bunch of people I don't know who could care less while wrapped up in lace or feathers. I just want to try to get through this with less freaking out than last time and figure out how this relationship with Neal works after a really long hiatus in a completely different situation."

David pulled her into a surprise hug and kissed her forehead before telling her, "I have a _healthy_ grandkid. I suspect just having one is something to be thankful for after yesterday. That's what matters. And, of course, that _you're_ happy about this. Are you? If not, then I _will_ kick Baelfire's ass."

Emma rolled her eyes and smiled. "I _am_ happy about it and who would have figured I could get knocked up by a dead guy? So no ass-kicking. And Neal said he'd fight for his family and he did. I never doubted that. Happiness in general and how we're going to make it all work is... a work in progress that just started. Obviously I want it to work, but I think we'd be friends even if it didn't... at least given the time to figure this out instead of rushing into something we're not ready for and screwing it all up. I'm not my sister. I want more out of being with someone than pancakes and sex. I want to have a friendship to fall back on when the other stuff gets messy and complicated instead of just... someone I fall on my back for."

David cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yes, well, regardless of the nature of your sister's marriage, which I try not to think about too deeply, I definitely don't want you rushing into anything you don't feel ready for Emma. Believe it or not, I didn't think your sister was. But... well... your mother _really_ didn't want to hear any arguments against standing up and fighting evil with a happy moment, and your sister was adamant, so I knew I'd lost that battle after the Town Hall and had to hope that in her case, the 'fools rush in' thing didn't apply."

"Oh, it definitely did!" snorted Emma. "And I don't want look like one, even if I'm the only who sees it looking at my reflection while everyone else is throwing rice and rose petals. Besides, the last thing I need or want right now is song-and-dance numbers, royal precessions, or getting anywhere near a boat to profess my undying love when I spend most mornings puking on dry land. I just want my life to be as low-key as possible with potion-brewing tweekers and stray manticores."

"And that car."

"Yeah, I know, it's a problem! Can we just head to Granny's?" Laying her hand against her stomach, Emma reminded, "I had to give half my dinner to a manticore and Charley's craving some fries with cheese, pickles, and anchovies now."

David smiled. "It's a boy?"

Emma almost told him 'no', but then she remembered that her mother had strung him along for a few months with her until he started buying boy-related toys. It was a little mean but she didn't have the luxury of messing with Neal, so she just told him, "No more baby talk tonight."

"All right, all right," David agreed, finally opening the passenger door for her and wrinkling his nose. "Awe, hell, that damn animal peed in my car!"

Emma bit her lip and waved her hand but nothing happened. "Seems manticore pee is also magic resistant. And you know? It kind of _sparkles_..."

"Feeling more inclined again to punch Neal," grumbled David. "And Regina."

"Do I need to remind you that _you_ peed in the back of the _my_ car?"

"Yeah, yeah, just get in the car, young lady," David grumbled while laying his jacket on the driver's seat.

* * *

When Emma returned home, Neal was cleaning up the last of the mess Sparkles had made.

"You didn't have to clean everything," Emma chided.

"I'm probably the reason she was digging through our trash, so I kinda did," Neal argued as he put the broom away in the kitchen. "How'd it go with Anton?"

"Other than a manticore urinating in my dad's truck, great. I think those two are probably going to be a better true love match than most of the human couples in this town," she replied honestly and with a rueful smile. "We left them eating fried plantains. Don't ask me how Anton grows plantains here. I think he has a secret magical underground greenhouse or something. Could be where Granny gets her avocados and kale in the winter."

"So a happy ending to the sacking of the livingroom," Neal smiled.

"Yeah, seems like it," Emma agreed, shutting the closet and slipping her arms around his neck. "I love you, you know."

"I love you too," Neal told her, leaning down to rub his nose against hers, amending, "Yikes, you're cold!"

She grinned. "So, find a way to warm me up!"

* * *

Snow had just finished tucking her son in for the night when David returned home, arms laden with plastic bags from the Dark Star. She raised a brow as she took half of them, noting the contents.

"And here I thought we hadn't adopted a manticore."

"I just want to have stuff on hand to bring Sparkles when I do butcher shop deliveries," David told her, setting his bags on the table.

" _Sparkles_? _Butcher shop deliveries_?"

"Emma named her 'Sparkles'," he shrugged, "and Anton seemed to like it. But he doesn't eat meat and there's only so much to hunt on the property. He can't very well let Sparkles out where she might get injured in strange land. I figured I would pick up food for Sparkles and we'd get produce in exchange for it."

Snow pulled out some stick-and-feather toys and smiled at her husband. "You really wanted to adopt her, didn't you? But giving her to Anton was a good thing. He could use a friend."

"Yeah, that's what Emma said," David mumbled and rolled his eyes. "I'm a great guy."

"You _are_ ," Snow insisted and kissed him sweetly, then waved one of the feather toys. "You know, we could probably find some use for a few of these in the meantime..."

David's brow lifted, thoughts of Sparkles fading fast. "Oh, yeah?"

* * *

 **AN** : Like Sparkles? Hate Sparkles? I think David has a soft spot for animals. I see him going to the Dark Star and happily buying a bunch of cat toys like Stone in _The Night Of_. The Cat really had a better acting performance than anyone on OUAT this season, tbh! (And _that_ is also around when I wrote the first draft of this chapter and how long it has taken me to write everything in between and revise it! YIKES!)

 **Next up** : A regular day in Storybrooke.


	23. Ordinary People

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN I DON'T WANT REVIEWS. I check the traffic stats. Please don't be lazy. At least tell me if you like the story or not. I need some validation, damn it! *cries in a corner***

 **Note to Mir: What!? You don't think Sparkles would look adorable? As for David... this is going to be LOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNG so head over to tumblr for my reply. I'll tag it #outstanding balance of morality and #Mir.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE**

 **ORDINARY PEOPLE**

It was an ordinary day in Storybrooke. No magical mayhem. No overly blustering weather interfering with the daily grind of residents going about the lives they'd settled into that included indoor plumbing, Netflix, and a library that 99.9% of them avoided like the place was made entirely out of asbestos and lead paint.

Belle French was in the 0.1% who did not cross the street when approaching the two story sandy-colored building with its white colonnaded entrance and looming clock tower that chimed the eight o'clock hour as she juggled her handbag with the cup of coffee and blueberry muffin she'd gotten at Granny's after dropping Gideon off at Ella Herman's daycare.

Some days she brought her one year old son with her and passed the time reading him books. Belle had briefly attended Ella's "Mommy and Me" class and found it far too simple for her standards, which shouldn't have really been a surprise since Cinderella probably had an IQ just high enough to be an independently functional person and all of the women that attended her classes were spoiled, uneducated princesses who'd been punished in this world by Regina with lives that while not being spoiled were also abysmally undereducated. Snow White was perhaps the exception, being a school teacher, but with all of the concussions she'd suffered, or perhaps even before that, she had more lady balls than lady brains... and if Henry's tutoring sessions the last few months were any indication, Snow had been prompted following Jasmine's departure to get her out of the classroom where she was a curse tenured distracted delinquent herself.

Most days, Belle felt like the only intelligent woman in the entire town. Well, perhaps the only intelligent _and_ not driven by a tangled mess of guilt and desperation to be loved and accepted by people who required guilt over mass murder to bestow that loved and accepted. Although, to be fair, said people required the absolute barest minimum of guilt expressed only once and bought it _hook_ , line and sinker, even if contracted in the very same sentence or said in the midst of actions that contradicted it.

One thing that Belle had learned both in her homeland, in her travels, as Rumplestiltskin's housekeeper, and in Storybrooke, was that one should never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people. Sadly, The Enchanted Forest had a lot of them (or ignorant people, anyway), and Rumple and Regina's version of Fiona's "Dark Curse" had done little or nothing to cure them of that ignorance or stupidity. Those who served Snow White and Prince Charming still bent the knee even though the pair had brought nothing but harm to them in defense of their own family, and they had blindly transferred that devotion to any and all their monarchs pardoned and embraced... up until, say, the "former" Captain Hook pulled them over, punched them in the face, and confiscated the money in their wallet over a made up broken tail light or "Sheriff Jones" arrested them and forced them to choose between eating rat trap cheese or nothing with a taser to the gut for accidentally screwing up her food order during her anniversary dinner.

Those things really happened.

And Belle would have been the first to stand up and do something about it... if she hadn't had a brain tumor that had both lowered her IQ and caused bipolar and schizophrenia-like symptoms that had her easily duped by fairies and suddenly relying on her worst enemies for help under the delusion that her husband wanted to poison her.

The worst part of it all, Belle mused as she fumbled for her keys, was that the tumor was hereditary and even if her father hadn't known the symptoms were due to a medical condition rather than a curse, he had known her mother and grandmother suffered from it, both committing suicide, _and had her memories of witnessing her mother's suicide erased and replaced by memories of an ogre attack!_

Needless to say, Belle had not stopped in Game of Thorn's in months and had no intention of any quick reconciliation with her father this time around considering the other times he'd wronged her in quite awful and blatant patriarchal, misogynist ways. Yes, Rumple had also done her wrong, but he had both the excuse of being the Dark One and _never_ was motivated by a belief that she was a stupid little girl who couldn't think for herself. Maurice? He was a chauvinist asshole who thought indulging a woman's brain took precious resources away from the important development of hips and breasts. Yes, she was small-busted and slender-hipped, but _honestly_ , even an intelligent person back in their medieval world would recognize that was inherited, not the result of too much book learning!

It was hard to accept that her father was just a sexist pig who wanted to control her and probably the reason her mother had escaped into books for the duration of her marriage... and possibly even played a role in the delusion that led to her suicide. But her father _had_ tried to marry her off to Gaston and his defense now was that he couldn't "in good conscience" have married her off to a good man knowing that her "mental fragility" would both become a burden to him and be passed down to his children! Her father didn't care that he was marrying her to a legitimate psychopath and sadist who enjoyed torture for sport, he cared that he was passing his problem off on someone else before she was too spoiled to sell! And yet he got all up in _her_ ass about her marrying the Dark One! Clearly it was only because he didn't get to make up the marriage contract!

So there was that. Gideon didn't have any grandparents to dote on him and the majority of his peers were being raised by either willfully ignorant princesses and princes or their ignorant subjects who didn't know any better than a curse and the educational system those involved were subjecting them and their children to. At least Regina did seem dismayed over that, considering Henry was in that system, but all the pressure from the "traditionalists" to keep old ways and ideas just to get their children in public housing with indoor plumbing and schools with provided lunches that wouldn't give them hepatitis, was a struggle.

Hence Belle's research projects.

After unlocking the large doors and pulling off her coat, hat, and scarf, Belle cranked up the heat and took her breakfast to the circulation desk to begin her day with a perhaps boring but comforting routine of laying out a research proposal for Regina. Of course, Regina probably wouldn't bother to read it until the shit hit the fan, but every time there was a crisis or even just some administrative or bureaucratic aggravation in Storybrooke that involved the seemingly irreconcilability of this world's ways and those of the magical ones they'd left behind, it fell on Belle's shoulders to gather the historical data while not boring the posse of heroes with the academic details. So she had decided to be proactive about it.

Belle didn't mind. She liked the research and wasn't one for making detailed presentations with charts and statistics. Rarely getting recognition for her work was the part that stung. Not that Belle wanted to be given a party at Granny's for finding some book. And not that she thought it wasn't a bit hypocritical that Hook got a party for finding a page in a book he didn't even get to Emma in time for it to be useful... well, and for not being dead because of that completely unhelpful effort (like August getting revived by Blue even though he didn't actually warn Emma about Tamara).

It would just be nice if some of the people in town would get library cards and check-out the books she meticulously dusted and organized instead of relying on Wikipedia or just enjoying the "bliss" of ignorance that the Dark Curse had given them, just enough to get buy at their curse-assigned jobs but nothing more or less and why bother to change that? People could be such a disappointment! Books could be too, but there were always good ones to make up for the bad, far more it often seemed than with people.

As Belle jotted down possible books for various approaches to the issues at hand, she tried to smother her anger at all of the people who did nothing to help her in her time of need. For all the times that she'd offered some key piece of information and put up with the lack of thanks and the often times condecention from Snow White and her family without complaint... Actually, Belle sighed, that was probably why no one had even thought she needed help apart from that family of assholes who _took advantage of her_ in her time of need and pretended like they were doing her favors when it was all about using her a stepping stone up to their self-made pedestals to bask in the glow of their own importance and goodness.

 _Jerks_.

Sighing, Belle moved through the stacks in search of the books she'd written down.

She was sane enough now to see where she'd gone wrong with her 'friendships' as well as in her marriage. Rumple had her involuntarily committed after her first "Lacy episode" not long after the battle against Fiona and she'd been furious until medication and sessions with Archie had... tamed that alternate personality that, for some reason, her illness had revived - an illness that her father had only than admitted knowledge of. It was only months later that Dr. Whale suggested the possibility of a brain tumor when magic was useless (as her father had said it would be) even though the equipment at Storybrooke General wasn't advanced enough to detect it. So, score one for science!

Whale didn't get enough recognition for how he helped the community either.

Intellect and non-magical or non-sword-related skill was pretty much ignored in The Enchanted Forest. Like Henry's ex-girlfriend's father had essentially spouted, being literate was for losers and pussies. What mattered was being able to gut a dragon and twirl the damsel you saved around a ballroom. And said damsel better not fill her head with grammar and syntax. Hips and tits for making babies only!

 _Ugh_.

You'd think Anna would have disproved that stupid, sexist view. The woman was as misogynist as they came and seemed to have acquired less than half of her sister's middle school level education yet looked like she made her pancakes with oxyconton. Belle was Kim Kardashian compared to that titless, flat-assed doormat!

And, yes, she was cursed to be a man-crazy asshole... or an asshole, anyway, but that didn't mean Belle forgave that bitch for taking her to the Blue Fairy or threatening to straight up whack her son that only got turned into an assassin because _she_ took Belle to the Blue fucking Fairy!

 _Grrrrrrrrr!_

Sometimes Belle felt like she and Rumple ought to have attended Anna's first wedding and dance to that song "Stuck in the Middle with You" because it felt like they were sounded by clowns and jokers, which made it seriously hard to smile some days... and she had definitely lost control and felt all over the place! And all Rumple got were people crawling back and begging "please, please" for help with something even though they didn't respect him or like him at all.

People only came to them out of desperation. Otherwise, they were content to remain in their blissful ignorance... which for some meant shitting in the woods.

Belle could not understand why anyone, but a woman especially, would want to live in that compound by the Wildlife Refuge. Yes, Aurora was probably even dumber than Cinderella, but didn't she _want_ to do more than flounce her hair and risk dying in childbirth? Oppressing women was how men continued backwards patriarchal societies with massive class disparity, poverty, and premature death. And for what? So they could sit on their thrones and swing their dicks around at dragons?

As much as Belle still hated Regina and was not going to forgive the things she'd done, she _did_ appreciate that in their world the only way a woman could gain any power or influence was through magic and bloody bloody violence. It was sad, but many of the awful things Regina did in the beginning were possibly her only escape from the unwanted life of a trophy wife turned neglected spinster when she couldn't produce a male heir. Leopold might have been too "kind" and dimwitted to go the Henry VIII route, but he certainly hadn't been a good husband. Apparently, being morally enlightened only extended to freeing genies, not wives, and Belle gave no credit for that, particularly after it all came out about Queen Eva's plotting against Cora.

And Snow White hadn't fallen far from that tree, the self-important, selfish little bitch who locked Belle in a room with the man who nearly cracked her skull open more than once before _fucking shooting her_. But, sure, it was perfectly normal that Belle would suddenly turn to Hook to help her shelve books and get romantic advice and then move into his ship! And why not trust Emma Swan to help deliver her baby when that cunt had nothing but gone along with whatever crap her mother was shoving Belle's way?

Sure, Anna Jones was actually responsible for the later stuff, but Emma had been no friend of hers at the start of things, so Belle couldn't much find the energy to sympathize with the blonde's quasi-similar situation. Emma at least had friends and family who cared about her happiness. Sure, they were assholes and dipshits who couldn't see the forest for the trees and apparently loved rapists and racists and serial killers, but they were a support group. Belle didn't even have a shitty one of those.

Well, there was her father if she was stupid enough to accept his brand of caring, but she wasn't a Charming.

After her mother's death, Belle had been alone. And if she'd had her true memories, it seemed, she'd _always_ been alone, her interest in books driven by a desperation to connect with her mentally absent mother who locked herself in her library for weeks while Belle cried, confused and inconsolable as a child.

Just as Rumple had.

It had brought them together, Belle supposed, even without her consciously knowing the truth of her own beginnings. That and they were both too smart (for their own good, their fathers would say) and for the world they lived in. They liked to understand the workings of things and people and never take things at face value. Rumple had once, in the early days of his curse before Beowulf got ideas and Baelfire used the dagger to control him and he lost his on his curse, used his dark power to help people, to bring peace, to try to clean up the ugly mess that had been left of The Frontlands. They'd both wanted to improve, advance their kingdoms for the good of the children, to give them better lives than they had. But everyone else? No, they could give two fucks about that!

So Rumple had become an evil hermit in a castle bartering in babies. (Which seemed evil given what his parents did, but actually he found them much better homes and also reduced the inbreeding of the upper class and royalty especially, which surely reduced the number of idiots and psychopaths on thrones over the past 300 years, which did help the masses after all). Belle had endured a psycho fiancé after getting her memories muddled by her dick of a father and ended up indentured to the Dark One, unable to realize any of her hopes and dreams beyond her messed-up-memories/illness-related-delusion of learning his secrets to make use of his power for herself... which, really, all were completely ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. The Enchanted Forest was never going to adopt any of the progressive measures Belle had dreamed of implementing with or without dark magic to do it.

And those measures seemed currently at risk of being overturned even here in Storybrooke thanks to that dumbass Snow White bringing thousands of people from that bimbo Aurora's kingdom here _without fake memories_ and _then_ throwing in a few more from Camelot while trying to "save" her bitch daughter (without any thought of Rumple) - and, of course, all the worst criminals, misogynists, and psychos from that kingdom took "sanctuary" here instead of returning to be prosecuted by Lancelot and Gueneviere _and Snow and Regina just allowed them to stay instead of extraditing their dangerous asses back to be tried and imprisoned or executed!_

At least most of The Land of Untold Stories people seemed like upstanding people. Most had been exiled there by the opposite sort for trying to change their worlds or going against the status quo there. They were inventors and poets who'd favored technology and academic learning - in worlds that had no place for such foolishness!

Storybrooke hadn't exactly welcomed them, though. Regina had cobbled together some tenements out of old warehouses and then pretty much washed her hands of them. Snow White did the same handing out blankets and food at Granny's. There were no public initiatives to have free educational or vocational classes or public works projects to give them jobs. No, just magically renovate some buildings and conjure up some extra blankets. No need for the carpenters or weavers to make use of their own skills to feel like they were part of the whole process, part of the town.

Belle could understand why Baelfire had hated magic for so long. It could be a nasty thing even when it was used with good intentions. It was just so easy to use it if you could, that people like Regina (and even Rumple when his curse got the better of him) didn't think if there was a less easy alternative that was actually the better choice for the greater good.

If only Belle hadn't had that stupid brain tumor then maybe she would have been able to write that up in a proposal to Regina and they wouldn't be in the mess they were in now, with farmers having their animals stolen, the park streams getting polluted, and men on horses slashing the tires of tractors and pickup trucks in protest of what they considered an unnatural way of life in a world they were only stuck in because ogres had taken over their kingdoms thanks to Regina casting the Dark Curse and her mother trapping them in a bubble for 28 years that was overrun with the aforementioned ogres the moment it popped.

The Enchanted Forest was, Belle had seen during her year there, a hot fucking mess. Half of Misthaven had lost the better part of its population, the infrastructure was damaged, and ogres had come down from the mountains to occupy it. Those people who had somehow avoided being swept up in the original curse found themselves either running from ogres or being conquered by mercenaries, pirates, and warlords. Essentially, the political map was thrown back 300 years to Rumple's natural lifetime... when FIona had originally intended to cast it.

Things were better abroad, it seemed, in places like Arendelle and Agrabah (apart from when they were under curses, of course). What medicine, literature, and technological innovation they had in "Fairytale Land" predominately came, if not via realm jumpers from actual other worlds, from those other regions across the sea from The Enchanted Forest... that also seemed more inclined to adopt new ideas from other realms. In that respect, their world wasn't all that different from this one during the so-called Middle Ages - and it was Misthaven that was their world's Europe, but stuck by the gods and ogres rather than religion and disease in a dark age for half a millennium.

Belle had hoped that Storybrooke could become the catalyst for their renaissance, but it was so uncertain, so many of the more recent residents and some of the original ones opposed to change, adverse to embracing all of the "modern" innovations they'd taken for granted for twenty-eight years, some simply for spite because it was imposed on them even though it now vastly improved their lives over what it had been back in what Belle liked to think of according to this realm's "Old World" vs. "New World" juxtaposition. Where they were born was old and where that curse brought them was new, and though they hadn't come here willingly like the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock, they were here and if they could just be patient and willing to learn the wonders of this so-called Land Without Magic (that really wasn't) instead of throwing their hands up in frustration at being unable to do all the things they did back home, Belle was certain they could prosper and _one day_ take all they'd learned back to Misthaven and the other continents and kingdoms, other realms even, to bring them out of their dark ages of intolerance, war, and disease. They could learn so much here to help so many of their people!

If only a few would come in here and pick up a book...

Sighing, Belle went about collecting books that hopefully held some strategic edge on dealing with those who were most opposed to doing so.

Originally, the place some people derisively called "Camp Camelot" was a refugee camp organized by Robin Hood while they tried to figure out how to properly house the Second Curse people, particularly the peasants who'd come over with no collateral to pay for lodging or had no translatable skills to gain employment beyond farm labor. Luckily, it was at least heading into spring when they returned to Storybrooke, so the temperatures warmed and there were those agricultural jobs. But then Camelot happened.

King Arthur was a manipulative man whom everyone thought, thanks to the "Dark Swan's" memory spell, was an impeccable fellow. He took over the camp and all the people already there were happy for it. Many of them, given their difficulty assimilating into Storybrooke life, were swayed by his proposal to establish their own community in the Old World ways. And even though Arthur was exposed as a fraud and killed, his ideas remained alive and well and gained more followers from even among the town's original residents who felt that Prince Charmings motivational speech was a lie, that they couldn't be both, and that either side of that was being a peasant and stuck in a job they were curse-trained for and hated just as much as plowing fields or emptying chamber pots.

For a peasant, David Nolan didn't act much like one, Belle mused with a frown. He'd thrown off that life and adopted that of Prince Charming like a trailer trash starlit getting discovered in Hollywood. New name, new clothes, new house, new friends, a complete loss of any emotional or intellectual connection to where he came from. And Snow? What a fraud with her "woman of the people" bandit crap, Belle snorted to herself. The moment Snow got her ass back on a throne, what did she do for the people? Got them cursed because she was too chicken-shit to have a straight-up, unapologetic war criminal executed when she had the chance! _And dozens of other chances!_

It irked Belle considerably that "The Charmings" were in charge of negotiations with Aurora and Philip. Well, mostly David playing mouth piece for whatever Snow wanted done because his balls had been clipped, it seemed, even before he shared his wife's heart, and Regina went along with it too so as not to dirty her hands with a mess that was, for once, not of her doing... at least not directly. Things might have been improved if she'd let Charming die instead of splitting her heart and thus negating the required sacrifice to cast the Dark Curse such that magic collected on the back end by having Emma utterly fail to do the thing that was the entire reason Snow cast the curse and the interest was having her body snatched by her evil sister!

Basically, it was turning into a _big_ mess, and all because of four kingdoms combined into two under the leadership of four morons, two of whom everyone worshiped because the gods made them the poster couple for true love.

Well, their true love could go suck a dick for all Belle cared! What good had it ever done her?

The sound of the door opening pulled Belle from her research and her internal griping and she smiled as one of her few patrons entered.

"Aesop, finished the last batch already?" she asked the bar owner who returned a smile with his stack of books.

Aesop had left home and ended up finding a portal to The Land of Untold Stories in the hopes that people there who'd also fled or been cast out of their worlds would appreciate his stories more and thus give him a story of his own as a writer and poet. It was really too bad that Dr. Jekyll had taken over that world in such a tyrannical fashion or it might have been a bohemian paradise... one that now as no more thanks to Hera, so people like Aesop were stuck between this world and the ones they came from. He seemed to be taking it in stride, though, something Belle rather envied.

"Well, not much in the way of conversation at the bar this week. Not including me, anyway," Aesop replied. "Not that I'm complaining. I don't need any more mysterious strangers killing me and impersonating me to steal savior tears from the morally corrupt arm candy of another black man murderer. No offense. I know your son was weirdly aged in a torturous realm and forced to do it by his granny. I'm just glad that the paradox involved in the weirdly-aged-out-of-time thing got me resurrected when it was undone. A few days of that skunk-haired drunk trying to get me into a three-way with her favorite bartender was more hell than I assume actual Hell is. I guess Merlin had turned her down but she still had jungle fever," he concluded with a roll of his eyes, then amended:

"I found Jean-Paul Goude's work quite interesting. Goude's unashamed erotic fascination for black and Latino women and style was highly imaginative."

"Oh, I completely agree!" Belle nodded. "And once you delve into pop culture history of the various decades in this realm, it contains some of the most penetrating icons of the eighties. Pun intended!"

Belle took out a stack of books she'd left behind the counter. "I set these aside for you. I think you'd really enjoy Ginsberg and Kerouack. Actually, you should hunt down my stepson who recently came back from the dead after a longer stay in The Underworld. Long story involving Sheriff Swan's evil sister and her manslut husband, so a boring, badly written waste of your time to get into the details."

Aesop chuffed at that. "I can't say I'm disappointed that woman and her female relations haven't returned to patron my establishment. I'd have had them thrown out long before the knife-throwing-related carnage to my drywall happened from the security footage. The Rabbit Hole must be far more lenient on drunken spectacles. No offense."

Belle snorted and shook her head. "None taken! I'm glad you have higher standards than they do, or who knows how badly I might have humiliated myself, or if I'd have just passed out, slept it off, and woken with no recollection of that fugue state so I might never have gotten treatment and eventually found out that I was ill. I owe you for being a better person than most of the seedy late-night establishment owners, Aesop. No offense."

"None taken, Belle," he replied in kind. "I'm just glad I could be of help. I might have left home to try my hand at writing my own story instead of just being part of others, but that doesn't mean I'd turn by back on good people in need. It's why I opened that bar back in The Land of Untold Stories to begin with and relocated it here. Everyone deserves to have a place to go-"

"Where everybody knows your name?" Belle quipped, the joke lost on Aesop. "It's a several decades old television show about a bar. I used to watch it when I was in the Asylum. Which seems a lot less terrible now compared to Regina's tower... or the stories I've heard about Jekyll's hospital... or that institution Fiona ran for a few weeks. Have you read _One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest_?"

"No, but it gets mentioned a lot by former patients," Aesop recalled. "I'll get around to it eventually, sooner rather than later if things stay quiet."

"A few more months if Aurora and Philip's compound stays put," Belle shrugged. "Either way, when the portals reopen and Hook returns..."

"Drunken bar fights a many," the writer sighed. "I figured. I'm enjoying the resped while it lasts. Sometimes I wish my bar could be as quiet as this place."

"And sometimes I wish the Library was less quiet... or at least less empty," Belle complained. "But most literacy around here came with a curse and is woefully unappreciated. You ran off to another world looking for recognition. I indentured myself to the Dark One after traveling around my own gave me no hope for change in my homeland."

"A sad state of affairs when an immortal evil entity showed more respect for knowledge, equality, and diversity than average folks... or so-called benevolent monarchs, I suppose," Aesop considered.

"Well, I think the 'evil entity' only cared about the knowledge part," Belle corrected. "It was Rumple, the man, who also cared about equality and diversity. I think it was sharing that thirst for knowledge, though, that allowed him some control, some equality of his own amongst the spirits bound to his curse. He shared something with the demon and they both thus understood a bit about the other in that common interests, even if the motivation behind it was very different."

"And how is that crotchety husband of yours?" joked Aesop. "I haven't seen him since Lady Tremaine dosed him with that personality altering potion and thought he was doing a stakeout at the docks."

Belle groaned over that stupidity. It turned out that Ella's stepmother had a sister. They'd both wanted to marry the same man (Ella's father) and that was a whole thing that ultimately led to Tremaine killing her sister after the old cunt got out on parole after her attempted murder conviction and Emma throwing _her_ ass in jail for actual murder... and then, for some reason, cursing her lawyer (Mr. Gold) during one of his visits so he woke up the next day and thought he was a detective named Weaver investigating a murder... which, incidentally, according to those Furies back when they were fighting against the destruction of worlds was the curse identity that Rumple would had gotten when paradoxes had continued to pile up and a curse was cast in a parallel Enchanted Forest - one where time moved many years for every one here and where Henry grew up extra fast and impregnated his genetic quantum-removed cousin, pissed off that world's Tremaine, and give them all quite a shock when he called for help (in typical stupid Charmings style it sounded like) and they discovered the dumbass sixteen year old (that was how Alecto put it) that was allowed to go off and "write his own story" by his criminally negligent blood kin (Alecto again) was now a dumbass grown man (Rumple's presumption) with a wife and a kid a decade older than _his_ uncles - and because of everything that happened there (and then in 2017), time had started to fall apart everywhere and space right along with it! It all sounded quite stupid. An area of Seattle? Regina running a bar? Although Henry as a failed author, that she could believe given how much he skipped school and his current deplorable state of grammar and spelling.

At least the goddesses had recognized that only Belle and Rumple had both the intellect and the common sense to save Henry from some similar future fate; his Charmings side of the family and their groupie Regina would have done jack shit with that information, either assuming all threats of that screwed up destiny were averted, or even more likely that it wasn't so bad after all to fuck your cousin and help bring about the worst series finale in the history of reality TV.

Ugh. Belle just couldn't _stand_ them and their myopic stupidity! Even with Zeus defeated and the books unbound and Authors no more, what those assholes had done or not done out of laziness, selfishness, and idiocy still managed to hurt Rumple in what was supposed to be a healing universe that had all those cancerous growth parallel ones created by Zelena's time spell cut off and destroyed. The possibility that some fragments remained, that Hera hadn't been able to completely wipe that magic or the echoes of those worlds from existence, bothered Belle considerably. Maybe it was just Rumple _knowing_ who he could have been that resulted in that outcome of the spell and the woman who cast it just a coincidence, but _maybe_ it was more complex and insidious than that.

Belle didn't bother telling anyone other than Rumple about her concerns, though. They either wouldn't believe her or wouldn't care. She just _really_ hoped that whatever Tremaine and George were up to, it wasn't some plot of Zeus' to fuck up the worlds again. She didn't exactly know what had become of Zeus, if he was in Taratrus or had ceased to exist - if that could be done - but Belle did not like things she couldn't explain, that didn't add up with all the facts at hand.

So that was her side project when not dealing with the more immediate issue of Camp Camelot.

Shaking her head to dismiss the thought for now, Belle told Aesop. "Glad to have his firstborn back, even if Neal is in his thirties and they have a lot of baggage to sort through. Annoyed I've been using his favorite scotch to soothe his second-born's inflamed gums. And putting off deciding if he's willing to attend another extended family dinner on Saturday. Even if we do, we might end up leaving early and finishing the night drinking your scotch given how things have gone in the past."

"Just as long as your 'extended family' doesn't show up with all their drama, I'm always happy to serve you both. In fact," Aesop remembered, "maybe you can get Snow White to cough up that horned helmet. She may think she won it 'fair and square', but Aslof's mother made it for him and he says it has sentimental value. And possibly actual value. Either way, if you could try to get the woman to return it, I'd appreciate not having to hear Aslof and his brother Asrod complain about it every Friday night."

Belle rolled her eyes at that and agreed, "I'll do my best, but as far as I know, Charming still hasn't returned Bo Peep's crook. They seem to have a certain 'finders keepers' and 'takers while their thug beats you up keepers' mentality. I don't know if that's a result of Zelena's spell or if they were always entitled jerks like that. I suppose I could always see if Rumple could transfigure a replica and switch it out, maybe get the replica to stick to Snow's head or turn her hair white if she ever puts it on..."

Smiling, Aesop complimented, "You really are one of a kind, Belle."

The clock tower chimed and the writer realized, "I really need to get back and get things cleaned up for tonight. Thanks for the books!"

After Aesop had gone Belle realized that perhaps she did have a few friends, and if it wasn't for her brain tumor, she wouldn't have trashed Aesop's Tables. So it had all worked out in the end.

* * *

"So, how is Sparkles?"

David looked up from his desk as Emma took off her coat and hung it over the back of a desk chair in the bullpen after dropping a large stack of papers with a Mayor's Office seal on the front.

"What makes you think I've been to see-"

Emma plucked a wad of pink fur from his hair and retorted, "I think it's _sweet_ that you're playing godfather to a giant cat-dragon-arachnid thing."

"I was just being helpful," David argued. "Anton brought Sparkles to the Pet Shelter to get chipped while I was out on parking patrol. Which is even worse than desk-related paperwork. I swear, the curse made the craziest street cleaning days and hours to just to make people's lives difficult and why has no one gotten around to fixing that!"

"Probably the constant magical upheaval that threatens to make parking and street cleaning irrelevant every couple of months," shrugged Emma. "And what's the point of a microchip? So Sparkles doesn't get mistaken for someone else's lost pink mini manticore?"

David rolled his eyes. "Funny. Apparently it's required for entering her in a therapy animal course. Along with vaccinations. Archie suggested it to Anton and Dr. Little approved."

"Therapy animal, huh? Dr. _Whale_ will love that."

"She'll probably start with Archie's therapy group sessions to get used to groups of people."

"I thought it was a book club?"

"Maybe it's both?" David shrugged. "I don't know, but I'll check it out next week. For Sparkles, obviously, not for therapy or books," he explained, amending with a frown at his daughter's grin, "Stop looking at me like that!"

"What?" laughed Emma, taking a seat at the opposite desk. "Your brother liked to slay dangerous beasts and make dinner out of them and you make them dinner and buy them kitty toys."

David harumphed. "I've slayed dangerous beasts, I'll have you know. And saved many a damsel in the process!"

"Yeah, but unlike most people around here who think that sort of stuff is important," Emma reminded, "I don't give a crap. Also, that's something Hook would say. You seriously need deprogramming. It's unsettling enough working in this cootie-infested office where he spent lunch hours scratching his balls with his hook and then answering the phone with it. I don't care if the Dwarfs steam-cleaned it and fumigated it, there's a _presence_. I wonder if Gold does exorcisms..."

"I don't know, but he does bringing lawsuits against this department," David grouched.

"Some of them due to you foisting your old unfinished expense reports and unpaid parking ticket paperwork on a one-handed, barely literate pirate when you jumped the proverbial ship," reminded Emma, then complained, "I read _Harry Potter_ and I don't understand half of the British-y slang he uses!"

"He said he wanted to demonstrate that he could be helpful administratively so Emma - er your sister - wouldn't have to deal with all of it," David sighed. "I didn't think there was any harm in it. Things had really piled up with all those crisis and the alderman thing was taking more and more of my time."

"He wanted to help himself by siphoning money out of the department's coffers by inflating expenses and pocketing the difference along with the actually paid parking tickets to fund his illegal gambling mancave above the Library," snorted Emma as she shuffled through the current load of tickets.

"Walter hit a deer last night?" she noticed. "You know he only has a provisional license since he nearly mowed Elsa down while sleep-driving. Someone else has to be in the car with him, and a deer through the windshield doesn't count."

"He wasn't alone," answered David and he leaned back in his chair while picking up his much needed third cup of coffee, "but Leroy was drunk. I just let him out a few minutes before you got here."

He pointed to an arrest report and Emma groaned. "Leroy's drinking again? I thought he was being less grumpy lately. I even caught him whistling while mopping the floor at the hospital the other day. Of course, when I noticed, he told me to shove my smile where the sun don't shine."

"Hard to believe he used to pride himself on a sunny disposition," mused David before adding. "Astrid problems. Blue found out about her stolen fairy dust babysitting moonlighting. I take it there's some punishment involved. Leroy wants her to leave. Something about running away together to Oz. She told him it's not that easy. Maybe it isn't. I don't know what to think about the fairies anymore. Blue... obviously she was complicit in Zeus' schemes, but the rest..."

"Unfortunate cult members that have to be deprogrammed too," said Emma, "but we have neither the time nor the resources to crack down on Aunt Lydia and her baby-taking-and-magically-aging-and-indoctrinating-into-her-loyal handmaidens cult. She's pretty much neutered in this world, anyway. No one's giving her their unwanted babies to turn into fairies. And whatever interaction fairydust has with the natural magic of this world, it's far less potent according to Regina, so unless she plans to make her own Cora bubble and push out all the native magic so she can even the playing field and make everyone definitely hate her."

"Does Regina have a contingency plan for that?" grimaced David.

"I doubt it. Blue is low on the list of potential fucked up magical world domination plans," Emma sighed. "She's definitely an anal-retentive bitch who doesn't like looking like a loser or not offsetting Zeus pulling her strings by pulling our strings, though. Do you think she'd help Aurora and Philip just to spite us for something that wasn't even our fault or intentionally directed at reducing her power and importance?"

David crossed his arms and answered, "Well, let's see. Because one Dwarf who sucked at his job fell in love with one fairy who sucked at her job and they wanted to run off together to realize a dream of doing something they perhaps wouldn't suck at, Blue framed Dreamy for diamond theft and got him thrown in King George's dungeon so she could completely brainwash Nova into believing being a fairy was her birthright and destiny... even though, obviously, she was born human and an orphan who would have had a very different life if her mother hadn't given her to her up before she died to her fairy godmother who was also formerly human but none were allowed to even know that until Tinkerbell was exiled to Neverland for discovering it after losing her wings and Tiger Lily was sent to keep an eye on her and the son of the Dark One that apparently reverse psychology-ed into casting his mother's curse, all as part of some convoluted plot to take Fiona down. So, _yes_."

"You could have just said 'yes'," Emma retorted, opening a bag of buffalo wing and ranch dressing flavored chips... and a container of chocolate pudding. At her father's look, she argued, "What? They were out of the chocolate covered chips."

David snorted, "It had nothing to do with work hazards. You only told me you were pregnant so you could eat disgusting food combinations at work."

"Possibly," Emma shrugged, dipping a chip in her pudding. "But it tastes better than Regina's kale chips. She tricked me and it was very mean!"

"So, in other words, she put them in a bowl on her desk and you ate them without asking what they were?"

"Okay, fine," Emma huffed, "but it's just common sense if you put out a bowl of snacks in your office you have to disclose if they are healthy organic crap that tastes like feet!"

"Well, I won't argue with that..."

"So, ready for your deposition this afternoon?"

"After ten already, yes, I'm prepared," David sighed. "Do you have another pudding cup to get the taste of quinoia out of my mouth?"

Emma snorted and pulled one out of her jacket pocket. "Mom still on the gluten free healthy shit, diet huh? She still has Sneezey refusing to sell you junk food? How do you survive until the weekend?"

"On the vending machine at City Hall," David answered. "I'm just glad she's so desperate to connect with you via food that I'm allowed to make actual breakfast foods once a week. I can't even eat oatmeal or have whole milk and I own a cow! This is all Ella's fault," he complained.

"Yeah, she's a nice girl, but she subscribes to blogs by celebrity dimwits like Gweneth Paltrow and Jenny McCarthey. Basically a cult too," snorted Emma. "Those anti-gluten and vaccine-phobic bitches can pry my artificially flavored chips and sugar-loaded pudding out of my cold dead hands!"

"Someone will be prying backlogged expense reports out of my cold dead hands at this point," sighed David.

"How did Regina just let this slide, anyway, even with magical mayhem?" Emma shook her head. "It was clearly already out of hand when my sister finally took her mouth off Hook's dick long enough to come into the office during the twenty-four hour period when she hated him for lying to her about murdering our grandfather. But not the actual murdering. And how did _that_ not strike you as totally fucked up?"

"I'd stopped trying to rationalize anything your sister did regarding Hook at that point, quite honestly," David shrugged. "I focused on real-estate listings, animal auctions, and keeping your brother from falling down any portals. And I gave up altogether when my wedding planning stalling tactic failed. But on the bright side, I suppose, I was able to play it off as nothing being good enough for my little princess, so it didn't result in me having to sleep on the loveseat in the Loft. I surrendered defeat to your mother's color-coded binders that I was getting a son-in-law whether I liked it or him or not. I liked having a bed and a wife more than I disliked Hook at that point. I settled on cultivating an opinion of apathy."

"Great," Emma snorted. "Well, I'll settle for apathy, I guess, over hating Neal."

"I don't hate Neal. I don't _know_ Neal," David corrected. "I get the impression he has far less interest than Hook in getting to know _me_ , so I don't see us having any beers."

"You enabled Hook. You threw Neal under the bus," Emma reminded. "And obviously, the _alcoholic_ would want to have beers with you if you were paying. Neal's not desperate to be liked by the town "heroes" so he can convince himself that means he's also a hero and thus his story was that of an anti-hero instead of a villain all along so he doesn't have to feel bad about anything he did, because it was all leading to getting in the pants of a hero and having weirdly arranged dinners with her family. Neal has his own father to tell him he's a good person. He also doesn't need to mooch off other people's dads because he killed his own."

David let out a sigh and pleaded, "Can we not turn this into an argument about justice and charity and how you think your mother and I don't understand the difference between the two? We did what we did, Emma. We can't change that. All we do is try to finish this paperwork, make this town a better place, and hope your sister and brother-in-law don't return and kill us all in our sleep."

"Nice. I will tell Anna you said that when she gets back... and hopefully doesn't kill us all in our sleep," Emma groaned, then asked, "Hand me the Tony's lawsuit?"

David dug through a pile and handed it over. "What's that one again?"

"Anna started a fight because of this guy's meatball flying off his plate and staining her dress," sighed Emma. "Too be fair, the doofus and his date were constantly sucking spaghetti and face there like every night, so it probably annoyed everyone there, they just were better behaved about ignoring the totally inappropriate behavior. But then Anna told them to stop and called the lady a tramp. She called Anna a pirate's whore. Anna punched her and arrested her...yadda yadda yadda... Anna's getting sued by the woman for misdemeanor assault and battery, unlawful arrest, not being read her rights or allowed a phone call or being given access to an attorney. Basically, Anna just locked her up for the night because she was pissed and then let her go. So the woman's also suing the department."

"And Tony's?"

"Suing for the damage that includes some very expensive aged wines they'd brought out for a diner party and a shattered bust of Tony's beloved mama and additional financial losses due to fewer customers sticking around whenever my sister and her pirate were there."

"And Tony couldn't refuse them service because they were cops," David surmised.

"That and Tony was a frequent gambler," shrugged Emma. "And not a good one. He owed Hook. So that lawsuit at least won't go anywhere. One less trial to ruin my week."

"I guess that's something then."

"Don't you have a meeting with Regina and Bo Peep's lawyers after the deposition?"

David grimaced. Peep had already sued the city and won. More recently, she'd filed a civil suit against him. "Pushed to Thursday. And in my defense, she was an extortionist."

"Ex-extortionist. You publicly said everyone got a second chance to clean up their act in this life," Emma reminded. "You can't just decide that doesn't apply to people who wronged you. _Or_ that it means people you care about get a hundred and one chances for shit they've done after that second chance. Not all of them have legit mental disorders or brain tumors. Some are just assholes. And you can't stoop to being an asshole to deal with them."

"All right, I concede your point," David groaned. "I'm hoping to settle instead of going to trial. She got enough from the city for her niece Molly Muffet's education. She just wants a public, non-government-required, admission of wrongdoing. And her crook back. I can't find the damned thing! I know I put it in the evidence room after using it on that ice wall."

"Hook probably used it to scratch his balls," shrugged Emma. "I wouldn't be surprised if he took a lot of magical evidence and kept it on his ship... and had it stolen by those mermaids. So it's probably being used by some upstart racketeering boss in El Dorado."

"Wonderful. Maybe I can get things delayed until I can get Ariel to track it with some of that 'find me' potion Gold has," David grumbled.

"Does she really keep her kid in a fish tank?" Emma wondered.

"I think it was a bathtub," David shrugged. "That was almost a year ago, though, and I didn't ask for details last time Ariel swam over for a visit."

"Yeah, probably a good thing she didn't get trapped here or there would be a whole ton of kleptomania-related theft paperwork."

"Probably," David agreed. "I know Snow considers her a friend, but honestly, I can't stand her. She's too... bubbly. And she stole my favorite cufflinks _and gave them to Eric_. That mermaid is not quite right in the head."

"Probably why Mom considers her a friend," snorted Emma, earning as sour look from her father. "I'm just saying, Mom use try out that new MRI machine. All those concussions..."

The desk phone in her office rang and Emma groaned, pulling out a pair of latex gloves on her way to answer it. "Sheriff's Department. This is Sheriff Swan... No we don't handle lost llamas... Wait... your pet llama is your nephew?... So... are you llamas that were turned into people or people cursed into llamas? Uh-huh... because he insulted a wizard's alpaca... Well, sure, performing true love's kiss on a llama probably isn't easy. I think I heard on some National Geographic show that they spit... Okay, well, I can't file a missing llama-person report until it's been twenty-four hours. You might want to just check the local farms. There's probably a few with she-llamas if you catch my... hello?"

"Llama curse?" asked David, bemused.

"Some heir to some throne got turned into a llama until true love's kiss can break his curse. Sounds like he busted his way out of his pen," Emma shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it's like a Shrek thing and he'll find a nice she-llama and find out he was always meant to be a llama."

"Or his uncle will find him and he'll just continue to spit at passing cars," said David. "I've gotten complaints. I'm sure being stuck as a llama on your uncle's farm isn't fun. But the last thing we need is one of those hunter-slash-poachers turning the poor guy into a coat."

Emma groaned. "Fine. I'll call Neal and see if he can pick up a tracking potion from his father. We'll drive by the farm after grabbing lunch, see if we can't locate Llama Boy, and if he's not in any danger, we let him having his adventure. And if we have time, we'll look for your illegally acquired magical crook.

"How do you feel about magical meats?" she asked while pulling out her cellphone. "I'm craving a Wolpertingerworst with cheese, extra sauerkraut, and jalepino peppers."

* * *

One nice thing about being principle was having the time to leave campus for lunch. Of course, Snow didn't think Regina was particularly thrilled with her choice of Dave's Fish 'N Chips, but it was nice to have a change from both PB&J sandwiches and Granny's once in awhile, even if change meant throwing caution into the wind regarding reliable food-poisoning-avoidance.

There was saw dust on the floor and the music was a bit louder than was conducive to conversation, but they had excellent fried clams and lobster rolls, Snow partaking of the former and Regina the later. These outings were never quite... comfortable, Snow realized, so the music provided a sort of buffer, an excuse not to talk at length if Regina didn't want to.

Snow dipped another fried clam in tarter sauce and considered what had been on her mind for a rather long time, years probably: she didn't really have friends. She had acquaintances from _Mommy and Me_ and coworkers and allies, but she didn't have friends. _Any friends_. Their family was... insular in the extreme, though that had never been what she wanted. _Red_ used to be her friend. And there had been a time, after Emma got here, when they were friends under her guise of Mary Margaret. But just as Emma never seemed to make friends otherwise, so Snow had only the one that she'd lost. And it was her fault that she and Red had drifted apart, repeated family crises putting a strain until Snow just hadn't even realized Ruby wasn't happy here... because they'd just never spent time together in this world and sadly that had transferred to their year in The Enchanted Forest without Snow even noticing.

She felt awful about that.

Which was probably why she'd started trying so hard to be friends with Regina, something she wasn't even sure Regina wanted to reciprocate beyond their tenuous family connection.

"Why don't I have any friends?" Snow blurted out as Regina was taking a swallow of root beer from her bottle.

"What?"

"Friends," Snow repeated. "I don't have any, Regina. Not that I'm not _related to_. And considering neither of my daughters actually want to hang out with me, that just leaves _you_."

Regina sat back a little, brow lifting and returned, "You're only wondering this _now_? Other than your werewolf who clung to you out of some twisted love-hate-blame complex after you helped get her first love murdered - a nasty habit you seem to have," she snarked, "you've _never_ had any friends, Snow. Normal children don't go looking to an eighteen-year-old woman for a friend."

Snow frowned and sunk in her chair. "You're saying I'm _abnormal_?"

Setting her bottle down, Regina explained, "No, I'm saying you're a spoiled, self-centered brat who continually deludes herself that she's doing something for the greater good to live up to some now shattered illusion of your never saintly mother. You're desperate to do the right thing to please that false memory, but you're too much like Eva to actually be altruistic and compassionate, so you give in to your natural inclinations of selfishness and while lying to yourself that the shit you're doing doesn't stink. Not entirely unlike Hook.

"At least I knew the things I was doing were terrible," she mused. "I just convinced myself that you all deserved it. But you didn't hurt me out of maliciousness, it was out of selfishness, ignorance, and just plain old stupidity."

Snow glowered. "Wow. Thanks for that, Regina."

"You asked," Regina shrugged. "I don't do tact. It goes over your head anyway."

"So... I'm spoiled and delusional _and stupid_ , so I have no friends?" Snow grouched.

"No. Spoiled and delusional people have friends. So do stupid ones. Hook has friends. Friends who'd stab him in the back, tie him to an anchor, and throw him in the deep end of the harbor, but regardless, they are people he regularly hangs out with who share common interests, hobbies, and illegal ventures. But that's the difference between pirates and princesses. Pirates are written to be communal, to work together, even if it's with one as an authority figure. Princesses are solitary characters who are supposed to be singularly satisfied by a prince.

"Seems to work for Anna," Regina pointed out. "But then she's emotionally stunted and not good with groups. Ella has her daycare, but then her IQ is so low, I can't imagine she'd be able to manage a friendship with anyone above the age of five. Other than Anna who has the emotional development of a Kindergartner. But, really, think about it, do _any_ of your princess groupie acquaintances have friends?"

Snow did think about it. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she never did see any of them out doing social things with other people, people other their family members doing family things or coworkers doing work things.

"No," she moped at that epiphany, "they don't. That... that's so _awful_! Why would the gods write us this way!?"

"Why would they have Henry obsess over reuniting his family so everyone _including him_ could be happy only to then make him miserable by having his presumed mother marry his step grandfather, his grandparents on both sides virtually ignore him for their own kids, and have August entice him to, like his father before him, run away... to a world where he'd age over a decade in less than a year and impregnate his parallel reality cousin, turning him into a complete stranger to his real family before throwing a curse at him to make him even more miserable _as an Uber driver_?"

"Um... because he was getting close to figuring out that Authors were made-up nonsense to enslave us all? And I thought it was 'Swyft'?"

"Well, yes, that," Regina snorted, "but I was going for: because they're asshats who ran our world by duping us all into thinking we're in the best of all possible worlds when actually they've been torturing us for thousands of years - and fucking with time so they can torture certain individuals well beyond their natural expiration dates by sticking them in crazy realms or putting them under sleeping curses so four generations of one family can all be the same age for zany February Sweeps fun!"

Rolling her eyes, she amended, "But also, villains are much better written than heroes, just because... well... they're far more interesting no matter whom is writing the stories. Which I am basing on overhearing an absurdly long debate on the subject at Granny's between Belle and August. It boils down to villains having complex or at least convoluted reasons to be bad. There's a whole back story there of how they went from potentially good to evil and if they're fully committed or feel guilt and regret. Heroes? Kill one or both of their parents, give them a villain to fight against or a birthright like that savior stupidity, and that's all they are. At least, in a literary sense. Not in an actual life sense, obviously. But still... stories do influence reality."

Setting her fork down in her coleslaw, Regina continued, "Look at children on Halloween. Do they prefer princes or pirates? Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader? At least before you gave Henry that book, he was going to be a cowboy. More of a gray area or anti-hero type.

"You see, most heroes in literature are not compelling. Their origin stories are interchangeable, their morals unwavering, their love stories completely vanilla," she explained to the sad-eyed princess/queen across from her. "In this world, the real world choices, there's more... well... realism to it. Fireman and cowboys and the like. They're called heroes, but it's not so simply defined. Wyatt Earp for example. Cowboys are 'cool' like pirates, because they're not singularly defined by heroism in the clinical sense. Fireman are viewed as much as daredevils as heroes, doing something goes against common sense with the perpetual risk of death. That peeks interest. Prince Charming... doesn't. And trying to turn Henry into his replica, I presume, was basically an attempt to brainwash him into the same cardboard complacency. Give him a new identity other than 'Author' and introduce him to other Authors... or perhaps gods pretending to be, so the worlds could go on turning every weekday at noon for the next incarnation of _As The Enchanted Forest Turns_."

Shaking her head, Regina mused, "Henry is smart. He got his paternal grandfather's genetics in that regard, thankfully. I'm sure Zeus realized that Henry was his greatest potential enemy. Just like Rumple before him. He tried to keep him close, appeal to the ego he got from both sides of his family and then manipulate that accordingly to keep him from ever figuring out the truth... even if that meant our existence would literally fall apart. What did the gods care? They'd just drag out our low-rated nonsense until it imploded then and start over with some brand new worlds and species to torment for their entertainment."

"You've been watching too much of _Good Morning Storybrooke's_ 'Inside Hollywood' segment, Regina," Snow smirked.

"Only because it's 'Harrison Ford Appreciation Month'," defended Regina. "If _Temple of Doom_ Indiana Jones was real, I'd find myself a portal and-"

"Do all of the things in those fanfictions you wrote that you think no one knows about?" Snow challenged and off Regina's startled look remarked, "I may be an idiot, but like you said, Henry's the clever grandson of Rumplestiltskin - and Emma still had that computer hacking software..."

Regina snorted and remarked, "Well, good to know you're using that dark spot in your heart for such nefarious deeds as trolling fanfiction websites to embarrass your family members. Not your friends. Because, as you said, you don't have any."

"Thanks bringing us back on topic," Snow grouched.

"Well, you stated it. And then played the same tune your entire adult life. Making a speech about doing the right thing and letting the villain get away with it for the hundredth time has long since grown very old," Regina stated. "You didn't haul in that Tremaine bitch. You and David have proven ineffectual dealing with Aurora and Philip. Without the gods clouding people's judgment, it was only a matter of time before your poll numbers started dropping. And you started to get a clue. Think of it as... a new beginning. Perhaps not a happy one. But a beginning."

"Wow, I'll put that on a poster and hang it in my office for the kids."

"It'll serve them better than false hope," shrugged Regina while Snow looked like she was fighting tears.

Regina sighed. "Oh, come on. I'm not saying anything that either of your daughters hasn't implied, Snow. Perhaps you had more clear convictions or a more colorful spin on them in the original timeline. You must have had one or the other since Emma seems to miss her original parents a great deal.

"Well, that and they didn't try to shove a steaming heap of misogyny down her throat. So what it comes down to, is magic changing time and influencing us all to be just slightly different, generally for the worse it seems.

"In other words: don't take it so personally," she advised. "Magic screwed you over, caused you to miss your chance because you whacked your future husband over the head with a jewelry box instead of a rock and nearly got burned at the stake instead of going for a troll-defeating stroll. Butterfly effect and all that."

Slouching in her chair, Snow poked a clam in her tarter sauce and sighed, "How do I change that, though? How do I become the person I was supposed to have become? The one Emma misses? The one Anna deserves to help her fight her curse instead of enabling it? I thought it would be easy to just... figure things out after the timeline was fixed, that it would just _make sense_. But I don't _feel_ any different. There was no weight lifted, no epiphany. I just... feel like I'm still the same apparently screwed up loser who let her grandson go realm jumping at sixteen and cause the near destruction of existence!"

"Yes, well, it sounds like we all let Henry run away from his unhappiness and problems just like when he ran off to that well and ran off to New York City," Regina reminded. "It's our one unifying family motto, apparently: if you don't like the story you're in, call it a sham and go and try to write yourself another through curses and portals. Better to find a loophole that delays the inevitable than deal with life sucking now. Well, that and being woefully neglectful parents. And grandparents. Better to just repeat the previous generation than deal with all the emotional and psychological baggage caused by the previous generation- that dealing with might actually make us better parents. You're not the only selfish bitch in the forest, Snow."

"I just... I always thought I was better than that," she sniffed.

"I always thought I was better than _you_ ," shrugged Regina. "Maybe there really are no heroes or villains, just assholes. We're not characters in anyone's stories anymore. We don't have to be one or the other. We can be good people. Or we can be jerks. Like everyone else. But it doesn't happen over night. Just like fixing magic. We're not isolated here for six months because it's good for the economy, that's for sure."

After a pause, Regina concluded, "But that doesn't mean magic is going to fix you at the same time. It's entirely up to you to deprogram yourself of all the selfish, ignorant, entitled things you did when dark magic was whispering in your subconscious. They're nasty habits now. Only you can break them and become the bandit princess you were once instead of this... _wet blanket_."

"I am not a wet blanket!" Snow huffed. "I stand up for things. I don't always back down."

"You stand up for stupid, wrong, or misinformed things," Regina argued. "You back down when you shouldn't and don't when you should. You confuse charity and justice ninety percent of the time. You show mercy only when it suits your personal whims. You _are_ a cliché fairytale princess, Snow. Being the poster princess doesn't make you better, just the most popular, the spokes-trope.

"And you wonder why Emma has zero interest in embracing your culture and heritage," Regina continued. "It's not something to aspire toward. It's something to aspire toward freeing yourself from. Which you can do now. We can all aspire to be more than the stereotypes we were written to be. We don't have the gods or dark magic pulling our strings, pushing us down certain paths."

Regina tilted her head and asked, "Do you even _like_ working at an elementary school?"

"I... I was promoted to principal. It was a huge honor."

"Right," Regina snorted. "You were promoted to principal for the same reason any sub par employee is promoted. More people under them to do the actual work they'd otherwise screw up while avoiding a lawsuit or taking a chance on some unknown quantity. You were a _terrible_ school teacher, Snow. Bird houses?"

"That... that was part of my real self shining through the Curse!" Snow argued and Regina sighed.

"All right, fine, maybe _that_ was. But most of the teachers in our educational system are awful, because they were put their by a curse and stayed due to tenure, which gives no actually qualified people - like Belle, for instance - the chance," Regina told her. "It's no wonder Henry is doing terribly in school. Unlike most of his classmates, he's smart enough to have realized the cirriculum is crap taught by terrible teachers, so why bother even trying?"

"If it's so bad, why haven't you done anything!" Snow exclaimed, arms crossed.

"I'm a mayor not a dictator!" Regina reminded. "Not anymore. I have a city council that's now filled with _alderman_ like your husband, royal representatives from the various kingdoms that got relocated here _by the curse that I cast who don't especially like me_. And, as Belle could also give you a long speech on, the people of our world, particularly the royalty, give two fucks about education or even literacy and math in general. Unless it's to write down your family tree, your properties, and double-check your bride's dowry, then it's the stuff of pathetic lay-a bouts who should be out stabbing dragons and each other to prove their worth as many men - or screaming in terror at dragons and swooning in some knights arms to prove their worth as feeble-minded, full-hipped women."

"That's an awful way of looking at our world," Snow complained.

"It's a realistic one," Regina argued, "that led my mother to decide villainy was her only way out of the life she was leading and my son in a future that no longer exists to run off to play Prince Charming in a world with too many princes already instead of using his intelligence and his passions to help the world he grew up in - or even the one _we_ grew up in. It's realistic and it is awful. And if those ignorant fools and their criminal followers in the woods have anything to say about it, that's the kind of world Henry's future child will be living in.

"My authority is tenuous at best," Regina continued. "Your Dwarfs might think I deserve having 'Queen' on my door, but there are a lot of people less forgiving and forgetful than you and your cronies, Snow. There are a lot of people who think choosing a leader for Storybrooke is a lesser of two evils situation, who are reluctant to trust me and would consider siding with Aurora and Philip because they have not been mind-whammied by a curse into any attachment to this world or loyalty to me even if they out-right betrayed you and David and all of us, including innocent children to save their asses. And if they get enough signatures or convince their representatives to call for a vote of no confidence and a special election, we could be in serious trouble. This town could end up at war with itself. And we could end up with King George on the throne and your other daughter and her one-handed wonder back on the payroll keeping the peace through threats and thuggery right out in the open."

"I can't believe that would actually happen!" Snow argued. "People here... they wouldn't side with completely giving up everything this world has given them."

"Never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people," Regina argued. "Losing a war to you taught me that. George could promise to bring back all the coal mining jobs this town never actually ever had and with the stagnant economy and unemployment level, people would be lining up with pick axes. I can't magically invent new industries and if people don't want magic-induced knowledge _or_ to take the time to attend the vocational classes to improve their skill sets for the ones we have, then I'm between a rock and a hard place. I'm not making promises. Giving false hope. And then being labeled the villain because it turns out to be a lie."

"Even if it costs you the town and the progress you've made in charge of it? The good you've done for everyone?" asked Snow.

"Not enough good. And not for enough people," Regina shook her head. "And one thing I did learn about myself after all of this is that I'm better at the administrative side of things than the inspirational speeches - or fighting the battles that usually follow them. That's your wheel house. You and Charming. So maybe take a sabbatical from supervising detentions to inspire your constituents to take a stand for progress and fighting the good fight even if it's not for an instant happy anything, because the alternative will be decidedly unhappy no matter what that boring bouffanted prince and his dithering dimwit with a feathery shall fetish princess preach."

That said, Regina raised her hand and called out, "Check please!"

Snow frowned and asked, "Do you think that will earn back Emma's trust?"

"Honestly?" Regina shrugged. "Not really. Some, maybe, but I doubt it's slacking off in your kingdom-running duties that has her the most pissed off at you."

Snow winced. "The misogyny thing."

"Yes, the misogyny thing," Regina snorted. "I mean, really, from a disturbing 1950's cosplay date to whatever the hell that wedding was, all of it should offend any modern woman who doesn't want to be defined by the creep who thinks its romantic to leer at them and make all of their decisions for them and then completely ignore them when they're not worshiping their dear husband. That marriage, it's The Enchanted Forest gold standard. It's the shit I endured, minus the leering, for over a decade. You had the rare exception to that. Emma respected that. She thought it meant you had a progressive sense of things, that you were the first of a paradigm shift that would bring that world better into alignment with this one - at least the part of this one that she dreamed of being part of, either as a child or one day as an adult with children of her own. And she respected and cared about you as Mary Margaret, a stranger who stood up for her, for what was right. Instead, you utterly destroyed that hope, that belief, and that friendship, by encouraging _what you believed was her_ to find 'true love' and her 'happy beginning' in a relationship and in a represenation of herself that exemplifies that rigid, sexist, female-disempowering patriarchy that caused the situation which led to her being orphaned.

"Hell, it probably led to Fiona turning herself into a fairy," mused Regina, "and making that curse in the first place. If her son died, what good was she? If her husband wasn't a manly man, what worth did she have? If that was how our world worked in our time, it was even worse three centuries ago. I mean, Rumple's first wife _had everyone think she was gang raped to death by pirates_ to escape being the wife of a cripple with a son who'd get eaten by ogres.

"But in our case today," Regina snorted, "the solution was not shoving your daughter at a pirate. Today, in this world, a woman doesn't need a man to have worth, to be happy. I got caught up in that fallacy," she admitted, "in the lie Tinkerbell was sold to screw us all over, and nearly destroyed my happiness with Henry that I had earned to get some fake rewrite with Robin. That's how deeply we've been brainwashed by our own writing, Snow. I believed I was madly in love with him because pixy dust told me that he was my soulmate. But I didn't know him long enough to _be in love with him_. Not truly. Did I love him? Yes. For the man he was or was trying to be, for helping us when he had no reason to do so. But were we really going to live happily ever after if Hades and Zelena hadn't gotten in the way? Probably not."

"And the same applies to Anna and Hook," Snow deduced with a frown. "I practically made Anna believe that Hook had to be right that they were true love because she wanted me to be proud of her, to not replace her with another child."

"Well, that and her curse-fucked emotions," said Regina.

"I don't remember you swearing this much," Snow scowled.

"Freedom from contrived stories. Freedom from censorship. Freedom from an impressionable ten-year-old for whom I had to bite my tongue all the time to keep from slipping up when he was around," Regina shrugged. "There were some positives to Henry spending a year in New York City with Emma... and the accelerated puberty thing. Although I'd rather go back to biting my tongue if that boy gets a girl pregnant before he's old enough to drink. There are enough babies in this town as it is. And _not a single parent who can get them to shut up for five minutes_ ," she directed rather loudly at the booth at the back.

Snow ignored that and continued, "I was putting Emma's happiness first. I really believed that I was. Which doesn't mean I didn't hate losing what scrap of a relationship we had as friends. Or that I didn't hate how she pushed everyone away, especially Henry, to focus completely on romance. But she had a horrible childhood. She didn't raise her own son like I didn't raise her. She was... broken in certain ways, we both were as parent and child, that I had to accept maybe couldn't be fixed for us as adults. Which I realize now was wrong and it's made things with Emma difficult. Now she feels isolated and unsure if she can even trust her own family, if we ever accepted her as our daughter the way we have or son.

"At least, like you said, Anna made a few friends," Snow sighed.

"More like groupies drawn to her fight club mentality and a feeling of obligation for her saving their butts," Regina corrected. "From what I understand, not that I have experience given the people I've chosen as friends in the past, healthy friendships don't include such bonding outings as double dates to make out while laughing at a convicted family member picking up trash. Not that it isn't friendship. Just... friendship between assholes, which I assume is not what you want for either of your daughters. That's the sort of thing _my mother_ would have wanted for me."

Regina waved her hand again toward the counter, " _What the hell is taking so long with that check!?_ "

Snow chewed unhappily on a clam before responding, "There's a lot I didn't want for Emma. And that I don't want for Anna either. I'm still... acclimating to that, honestly, having two daughters. First Emma was away and now Anna is away so it doesn't quite feel real, you know, like that week was a crazy dream. Which I know it wasn't. Emma is so different. Different in ways I remember and different in ways I never got to know, or maybe couldn't because her sister had some sway on how she behaved when she was stressed or upset or afraid, I don't know. I'm starting over from scratch it feels like sometimes, and failing most of the time. I was less afraid and overwhelmed dealing with a newborn."

Swirling the straw in her Coke, she admitted, "It _did_ hurt that when I was just starting to get to know my daughter her interest was swayed by romance. We didn't get a chance. But that's what I was taught was right, what she needed to be happy. And now... I've been trying so hard with Emma, to regain her trust, to... to recapture the bond we were starting to make-"

"And suddenly another man steps in," Regina smirked, "this one without your stamp of approval. A rather fat stamp of disapproval from what I remember. And of which Emma is now aware."

"I know it's selfish and petty," groaned Snow. "I screwed up. _Charming_ and I screwed up. But it was more my insistence than David's that we let Neal and Belle go off on their own. I just wanted to forget the heartache and start over, not dwell on... well... false hope."

"Yes, you are an awful person," Regina sighed. "And I was selfish and petty when Emma came to town. The Curse aside, I thought I would lose Henry's love and attention, the time we spent together. I ended up losing that myself by being a bitch about everything. Henry was fully capable of being in both of our lives. I was just too messed to understand that. Like Anna is too messed up by her curse. She's literally incapable of doing that. She has one single-minded obsession and everything else falls far second.

"But Emma's not her sister," Regina reminded. "She's not going to jump on a dick and forget you exist. I don't think you have to worry about Emma dragging a man-shaped tumor around everywhere she goes. Actually, both Emma and her dick seem capable of going at least a few hours without suffering separation anxiety induced psychotic breaks like spoiled toddlers."

"That's mean, Regina."

"It's accurate. Anna literally can't go twenty-four hours parted from her pirate without freaking out, threatening people, causing bodily harm, and using any means necessary to get him back, be it dragging us all to Hell or putting you in a potentially permanent coma without a second thought. From which _I_ saved your ass, by the way, _not her_ ," Regina pointed out.

"I was getting extremely tired of your bratty daughter getting congratulated every time I saved the day while all she did was drool over her man in the background until the smoke cleared and she could employ his pathetic tactic of boasting what an effort she put in to seem important," she griped.

"She did fight Gideon and the Black Fairy," sighed Snow.

"She didn't have a choice. And we both know it was Emma's goodness that won that battle, not Anna's demented self-preservation to be Hook's reward for pretending to be nice _to get into her sister's pants_ because if he can't have his happy ending then her life is meaningless," Regina snorted. "That is _not_ healthy. But I gave up bothering voicing any objections to that toxic mess when it seemed like the pirate was actually the more self-aware one in that relationship. And you all were working so hard to promote it.

"AND WHERE IS THE FUCKING CHECK!?"

The couple with the baby glared at Regina while the teenager at the register finally took her earbuds out and admonished, "Keep your voice down, Madam Mayor, or we'll refuse you service!"

"If you'd put your phone down for more than two seconds and do your damn job of serving me the check, I wouldn't be shouting," Regina growled. "What is so important? A YouTube cat video?"

"No," the girl huffed as she walked over and dropped the check down on the table along with her phone, showing a video of 'Albert Spencer' talking from his prison cell.

 _"People of Storybrooke..."_

* * *

 **AN:** Regina's explanation for the fuckery of the gods was, of course, inspired by _The Good Place_. Zeus is/was basically a more successful version of Michael who figured out how to not only psychologically fuck with humans after death but in life to *and* made that into a series of reality shows on Mt. Olympus. So there was a show about Enchanted Forest, Wonderland, Oz, etc kingdoms and even a film noir type one featuring Whale's black and white world! Enchanted Forest spawned Storybrooke as a spin-off like Fraiser from Cheers while the original was about to run its course due to lack of action during the Dark Curse because badass Cora and her henchman Hook and good-guys Robin, Mulan, and Philip were all frozen by Cora's spell; part of Anna going back in time with Zelena's spell was to alter Cora's spell so people didn't age but weren't frozen and could use portals to get to other lands allowing for that show to be rebooted instead of canceled. Yay?

The bit about Tremaine and Weaver is taken from the spoilers for Season 7. In this story, I keep adding bits about that alternate timeline future as it's revealed, so here Alecto told the _full story_ to Belle and Rumple, _including_ that the mysterious dead Alchemist was the previous version of Henry recruited by Hera to fix the mistakes he made inspired by Zeus' manipulations and lies. At some point after the events of Season 7 (which is hopefully the last season of this dumpster fire show) Lucy and Cinderella died horrible, painful, bloody deaths after/or leading to Henry discovering the truth about Authors and The Books, that he was manipulated into leaving his family (because his original motivation was to have a big, happy family) to a world where he'd literally grow up apart from them, causing a further disconnect between him and his family, all for Zeus' drama and attempts to keep the worlds from falling apart but still in his control through bad writing and curse-shaped Band-Aids. And, of course, learning that his father wasn't in Heaven and that his mother was slowly dying, trapped inside her evil twin, both of them imprisoned because they could defeat Zeus and free the worlds of his literary tyranny.

So that Henry became like a time aberration in _Legends of Tomorrow_ and had to sacrifice himself to nonexistence so that the version of himself in the universe that was as it should be (or at least a lot less damaged by time travel storms) could grow up with his parents in his world and live a life free of magical servitude and contrived love.

Why doesn't Neal remember any of what happened in the future if he was dead and Lord of The Underworld? I'm going to say it's because Aphrodite had possession of his heart and dipped it in The River of Forgetting that's generally used (according to Greek myth) by souls in Elyssium that want to forget their previous lives and be reincarnated back in the mortal world. When Henry went back in time and split his mother and aunt that caused the future to be erased.

I have a lag time of about 8-9 months between the Season 6 finale and the start of this story. Anything revealed in Season 7 that happens in that time but doesn't here, we'll say that Future Henry went back to those times first to undo those events but for some specific reason couldn't split his mother and aunt until that exact moment on their birthday at 8:15, an event which made any past changes on his part irreversibly permanent. Don't strain you brains!

I've also decided that the people in those alternate realms created by Zelena's time spell got their souls from people in Elyssium, Tartarus, or The Underworld. They also passed through The River of Forgetting and were essentially reincarnated in all times throughout history when those universes popped into existence. This was an unnatural use of magic to allow the paradoxes so all of those souls were never meant to have those lives as they were not allowed to _choose_ to leave the Afterlife and be reincarnated as new people (or pass on to another level of Afterlife instead). So even though Henry lost his wife and daughter, they were never meant to exist in those lives and were essentially tormented souls, souls ripped out of the Afterlife and forced to play parts in contrived stories for Zeus, to be people that were never meant to exist but for the catalyst of dark magic.

Sorry Henry's Oedipus Complex 2.0 and your bucktoothed spawn, but you're badly written fanfiction in _my_ reality.

 **Next up:** A small time jump and internal Storybrooke politics heat up considerably while winter throws a snowy punch.


	24. The Storm Part I

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: Apologies for how long it's taken for this chapter and any errors herein due to my running out of patience to edit it. It's a long one that went through multiple revisions with not a lot of available weekend time to do it and I finally said enough is enough and it is what it is - another conversation-heavy chapter, so I'm sorry for that too! There will be some action in the next one to make up for it. On another note, I stopped watching** _ **Once Upon A Time**_ **after Stepford Swan portaled out of Ethnic Enchanted Forest (and sadly not into rehab for the massive amounts of opioids she must be doing to look like such hot-buttered-ass that will surely result in some brat with brain damage on top of the hereditary psychopathy and alcoholism), so I am no longer aware of what is canon on the show - but I did read a recap of the Rumbelle episode and so included references.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR**

 **THE STORM PART I**

(six weeks later)

 _On the television screen, dressed in his makeshift prison clothes, the deposed King George spoke to the camera from his cell with all the conviction of a man not convicted of a crime but still leading a kingdom._

 _"People of Storybrooke," he rousingly began, "I speak to you today as a man wrongly convicted. Did I take the life of a man in this world? Yes. But was he truly meant to be a man? No. I killed an unnaturally augmented rodent kept alive by the spell not unlike the curse that trapped us all for decades!_

 _"Should we not forget the_ _ **real**_ _crimes committed by those who run this town instead of the death of a mouse?" he continued, hands fisted in his lap. "Who is our mayor Regina Mills? The woman who cursed us all to this world for twenty-eight years without our minds!_ _ **A mass murderer who went by the moniker The Evil Queen!**_ _A woman who crushed the heart of our first sheriff, her decades-long sex slave because he tried to free himself from her bedchambers. She poisoned her son, a child she adopted under false pretenses, a child brought into_ _ **this**_ _world because his mother had to be sent here lest our mayor have murdered her as a newborn babe, in an attempt to kill the poor woman as an adult so she could have the boy all to herself and continue to keep us all her mindless drones._

 _"And yet she was reappointed by the City Council and none of you spoke up simply because she showed more competence than our replacement mayor, our second Curse-caster, the woman she damned us all to get revenge upon in the first place! Our town is run by a stepmother queen consort and a sitting queen joined at the hip with her fraud of a prince husband who led everyone to believe he was my son, including his allies, until a rampaging giant exposed his lie after my attempt was thwarted by that werewolf. Moral authority? Hardly!_

 _"I was merely trying to expose incompetence and hypocrisy," the former king insisted. "_ _ **Incompetence and hypocrisy that defines this family so virulently that they could not even identify their SAVIOR child from her EVIL TWIN**_ _. Their heroism considers it perfectly natural for their daughter, a woman who championed for the law and for justice upon her election to replace her late superior, the aforementioned victim of a decades of sexual assault, to throw away all her convictions for the love of a serial rapist and killer who even as she made him her deputy wore the rings collected from his victims, one of which was her very own grandfather! Another,_ _ **his**_ _stepson, handed over to Peter Pan, a child abusing monster who also targeted her child!_

 _"Do these actions speak to competent leadership, moral or otherwise? One can excuse an Evil Twin for such disgustingly amoral choices in lovers. My own son had such a magical affliction. But as his father, even before I became aware that a curse was behind his devious nature, I did my best to curb those desires! Because that is what a parent does! That is what a_ _ **king**_ _does. I taught my son, my heir, to channel the violence and the lust into slaying dragons to help save villages and I would never have sanctioned him marrying any of the pretty-faced murderers and thieves he bedded. I wanted him to find the best of himself that he could, even with his handicap, his addictions, that blinded him and drove him astray, or at the very least channel his worst into actions that benefited his people._

 _"But these people you call heroes? They do what suits them at the expense of everyone else. Snow White joined her cursed child in threats of physical violence and death threats against a young man who had been tortured for twenty-eight years, who was just trying to find a way to free other children like him while being controlled by a psychopath. Why? Because he had caused them harm? No! Not even for the threats he was forced to make, but for sending our pretender Sheriff's lover on an unscheduled by completely harmless vacation that cut down on the future Mrs. Jones' acts of public indecency, something I_ _ **never**_ _allowed of my son in our kingdom! I would have thrown the boy in the dungeon for dry-humping a murderous pirate wench in my dining hall or in the streets of my capital. But this bunch? They practically married them at sword point and forced a good number of you to attend like you actually wanted to be there for that disgusting spectacle!_

 _"Forget the scars of the past? Yes, that suits them fine! They want us to forget all the ways they have hurt us, want us to cease seeking justice for those who died in their wars, their curses, and because of their evil, psychotic relatives and enemies who routinely fall out of portals to torment us._

 _"_ _ **I rot in this cell while a mass murdered runs our town**_ _. While her sister, a woman who literally erased an entire universe before topping that by raping a man to spite her sister with a child, gets to walk free, got to retain custody of that product of her despicable crime as if she could possibly be a fit parent. Thank the gods, literally, that they put an end to at least that horror! But our resident Wicked former Witch should be sitting in a cell, not me. Which won't happen as long as this family is in charge. Just as the moment the pirate returns he'll serve no time for any of his crimes and his afflicted bride will be allowed, no doubt, to continue to run as roughshod around town as the ex-witch, as if we should pity them for their cursed states and turn a blind eye to all the harm they do. Well, I play the world's tiniest violin for them!"_

 _George pantomimed with his fingers as he continued, "I wouldn't even get my hopes up that the counterfeit Savior who looks like drug addict with her pasty face and unwashed hair and her otherwise unemployable drunk husband who was supposed to protect us with murder weapon he still wore while she clung to him like a dimwitted little damsel, not the strong, unwavering hero who was destined to protect us all, find a way back onto the city payroll, whether Sheriff Swan likes it or not._

 _"I applaud her intentions of reform, but her family have no such inclinations, and they have the power in this town. They have duped the masses into confusing charity with justice, misogyny with chivalry, hypocrisy with humility and heroism for years while our minds were clouded by the selfish intentions of Zeus._ _ **But this is a new age!**_ _We are no longer controlled by the whims of the gods and the direction of their stories. Regina Mills, Snow White and Prince Charming, they don't have to be our defacto leaders just because they are! We should have leaders who have earned trust and loyalty! Who have paid a debt for any crimes they committed if they are to be considered reformed and forgiven. People who put the masses before blood ties and who keeps their beds warm at ni-"_

With an expression of disgust, Regina shut off the TV, silencing whatever other slandering - and sadly not without kernels of truth - George was going to do in his latest pre-taped prison interview that the hacks at _Good Morning Storybrooke_ kept airing for ratings before she found her ire transferring onto the insipidly cheerful anchors and their "Snowpocalypse" report and then her whole day would just be ruined before it even began.

Sighing, Regina refilled her coffee cup and mentally prepared herself for a stressful day of blizzard preparations... that would include dealing with the forest-dwelling segment of the town's population.

She took a sip of the strong brew and sighed.

Somehow they were surrounded by amoral scoundrels trying to build a fiefdom free of ogre threats tearing it down, yet _they_ were being made to look like the villains. Probably because some of them had been and had not suffered punishments equal to their crimes. Charity was well and good on an individual basis, but Regina was not so foolish as to think Snow White's forgiveness ought to pardon her for every other life she'd taken, every family she'd destroyed, every village she'd ordered slaughtered. And it was certainly harder to embrace such foolishness now that all of her darkness had returned to her heart, returning the full force of nightmares that had ebbed after she split her heart in two, that were even tolerable when halving that darkness with her unreal half.

Between her own sessions and the ones Regina was sending Henry to once again, Archie was going to make a killing off of her this year... assuming she didn't get actually killed by one of these increasingly radicalized lunatics living in the woods that George and his female counterpart "Lady" Tremaine were speaking too. That bitch was out now, all the evidence that she'd offed her sister, Cinderella's stepmother, thrown out on appeal because of the shear magnitude of corruption and laziness with which Anna and Hook ran the department and the investigation. A number of murderers and other criminals walked free now because of the cases that Abigail had now found compromised.

And their former DA was taking full advantage of that fact.

"You look constipated."

Her son's comment drew a sour look from Regina, but she retorted in jest, "You're the one who insisted we sample Granny's storm-sized batch of meatloaf. But at least we won't have to worry about the Town Hall toilets getting clogged during the blizzard."

She then raised a brow at Henry's attire and asked, "Is that a new scarf? What have you done with my son? Don't tell me you're going to start wearing leather jackets and unbuttoning your shirt."

"It's like zero degrees outside and snowing, Mom," Henry answered with a roll of his eyes as he fixed the big gray scarf with thinner red stripes than his own. "And I only borrowed it from Dad."

Pouring her coffee into a travel mug, Regina reminded, "I can get you some new scarves, you know, if there's nothing in town you like."

"It's fine," Henry insisted. "Dad said he doesn't mind sharing and he has like as many scarves as you do shoes."

Regina ignored the snarky reply as she recalled the boxes labeled "SCARVES" they'd had to load onto the _Jolly Roger_. There were three or four of them in the basement storage locker, she supposed since Neal had recently moved to that apartment... which was probably a good thing for him since Zelena had pawned or thrown out most of his personal property of any value. Not that the scarves had value to anyone but Neal, probably. Still, she would be quite upset if Zelena had thrown out her shoes.

Not as upset as if her sister suddenly swooped in to co-opt her son's time and be the "cool parent", though Regina knew that wasn't what Henry's birth father was trying to do any more than Emma had been when she arrived in Storybrooke. And Neal was nothing if not remotely cool. Besides, if having Neal in his life instead of that "cool" pirate for a stepfather got Henry to apply to college instead of turning into a realm-jumping, cousin-fucking Uber driver who blew his college fund on self-publishing a book that made August's slutty detective thrillers look the Great American Novel, well, then Regina could put up with the man's presence further diminishing her time with her son.

The clock tower chimed in the distance and Regina grimaced. It was time to officially start this exhausting day.

"Do you have your duffle bag ready? I have to get to a meeting."

"Yeah, already by the front door," Henry answered while grabbing a pastry from the stovetop.

To think one of those had almost killed her son and he didn't think twice about eating them, Regina considered. Another reason that Henry needed more therapy. He'd forgiven her too easily. Maybe George was right that the residents of this town had too...

There was a time when Regina would have only shown up to a storm shelter to give some self-engrandizing speech and gloat over how pathetic "Mary Margaret" was offering blankets and smiles to old people. She wished she could have said that bringing Henry into her life had changed her, but her compassion had been singularly focused on her son and even then it had ended up falling second to her desire to protect herself.

The memory of Henry laying in that hospital bed, his heart stopped and the machines screaming would always haunt her, Regina knew, even if her son had forgiven her and didn't even seem to give it a second thought as he bit into one of her homemade apple turnovers dusted liberally with cinnamon that his matrilineage seemed so fond of.

"Don't forget your mittens," Regina reminded. "The temperature is going to drop."

"I know, Mom," Henry groaned. "I've been living in Maine practically my whole life."

Yes, practically. Nine months in Emma Swan's womb, three weeks somewhere between Phoenix and Boston that could have been in Fiona's child slave labor mine for all they knew, a year more recently in New York City...

Henry hadn't exactly deemed Regina worthy that first week they were together. She hadn't been able to reach into her heart and find the non-blackened parts, oddly not until after she learned where he'd come from and what keeping him could mean for her happy ending. She hadn't told her mother _that_ , that she'd discovered the truth and kept him anyway. If she had, well, it was unlikely Cora would have even bothered stringing her along with false promises.

And despite their quasi-reconciliation in The Underworld, Regina suspected that if her mother had actually known how much she'd changed, the person she'd become instead of the focus falling on Zelena and Cora's own rather self-centered regrets at losing her more ambitious daughter... well... her mother wouldn't have been so quick to offer any hugs.

Heart or not upon her death, a new found appreciation for the complexity of motherhood with it or not, Regina knew her mother was a sociopath at best, a psychopath at worst, and whether or not she would grudgingly accept Henry in Regina's life, she definitely wouldn't have agreed with how her daughter was running things as a small town politician elected by the people rather than a vindictive queen forcing her will upon the subjugated masses - as she _knew_ George and Tremaine wanted for themselves.

It wasn't about power or control or ownership anymore, Regina considered on the drive to the town commons, Henry in the passenger seat fiddling with his mittens. It was about doing right by the people who, to her complete surprise, had submitted a petition for her to resume the office of mayor. Yes, it as true that "Mary Margaret" was probably the worst small town mayor in the history of small town mayors, and yes, her position now was again in peril, but there had been other competent choices who didn't have blood on their hands and blackened hearts, but even they chose her.

So even if it wasn't a lasting victory, a lasting endorsement, it had made Regina feel _good_ in a way she hadn't, probably since she saved Snow on that runaway horse.

Which wasn't to say they sung Regina's praises up until Aurora and Philip officially founded their separate kingdom and George started a mudslinging campaign. Even though she'd gotten the town running smoothly again, the power back on, the trash picked up, the distractions of her family had left them wanting, particularly as people kept turning up with various curses and portals with nowhere to live and no job skills to make money for rent even after she managed to increase the public housing. During the last mess in stopping the residents from tarring and feathering Snow and David for their "an apocalypse is coming" speech, she hadn't faired much better, earning the same accusations that her first priority was keeping her family safe and that she wouldn't have time for any further priorities since they seemed to have always done more endangering than saving after Emma had broken the Dark Curse.

George was capitalizing on all of that.

But Regina would damn well do her best to prove that she could be a good mayor who did everything within her power to keep the people of Storybrooke safe and give them the chance to find their happy endings whether that was here or in some other land. Whether or not she had a dimwitted stepdaughter with a doofus for a husband/prince.

While also trying to be the very best mother she could be with an embittered step-grandaughter/sheriff and overly chill sort-of-step-grandson-in-law hogging her time with Henry.

That sense of pride and determination - and a strong, hot cup of coffee clutched in her gloved hands - got her through the freezing parkinglot that was already filled with delivery trucks bringing more supplies to add to the overnight shift of drop-offs, some of which still sat stacked by the bulletin board.

"I appreciate you helping with this, Henry," Regina told her son, fixing his borrowed scarf.

"I like helping, Mom," Henry shrugged. rolling his eyes at her fussing.

Regina smiled at the young man who now stood an inch taller than her. For awhile there, it had started to seem like Henry was losing that goodness, growing out of it and into his grandparents' entitled type of heroism that was more about looking heroic than the people who needed saving. Perhaps that was an influence of the Author magic, trying to manipulate and corrupt him as it seemed Isaac had thoroughly been, or maybe it was Hook's influence, but the Heart of the Truest Believer was no match for the contrived drama of the gods and a drun k pirate... at least not when her son had people looking out for him, encouraging him to be the best version of himself instead of some copy of his grandfather. Prince Charmings were overrated and apparently had become a dime a dozen for awhile there. But in all the worlds there still was only one Henry Mills, and that knowledge, to Regina, was comforting and she hoped to do her best to help her son find strength in that individuality, in existing outside of anyone's stories, instead of doubt.

"I know," Regina nodded, smiling warmly. "It's one of things about you that makes me most proud."

"Awe, _Mom_ ," Henry groaned, glad for the cold gust of air to counter a blush.

* * *

Cots had been set up inside the Town Hall overnight, hauled out of City Hall's basement, supplies stacked yesterday on stage and in the small multipurpose room/kitchen that was usually used as a staging area for chaffing dishes when the hall got used for large private gatherings - like wedding receptions.

Snow let out an exhausted sigh as she examined the water stains on the ceiling from her spot laying a cot, her thoughts turning to the wedding almost was the way she wanted it, became something of a last minute compromise, and ultimately wasn't even for the daughter she thought it was, and so it legally didn't even count.

The sad irony, of course, was that Archie had officiated that rooftop ceremony - the roof of a shoe store decorated with swooping power lines and pigeon poop because it was _Emma's_ private personal stargazing spot but it wasn't _Emma_ who was actually getting married that day, and now her cursed daughter had run off for a long overdue and extended honeymoon with a man Snow now wasn't entirely sure Anna was emotionally competent enough to love (let alone vice versa) and her destiny-burdened daughter Emma refused to talk to Archie about what she was going through - and had been through - because she considered him just as much to blame as the rest of them.

And Neal didn't seem to like her any more than Emma at the moment, or at least maintained an aura of apathy in contrast to Killian's 180 from sexually perverted "flirtation" and murderous behavior when they met to desperation to please the in-laws. Neal didn't seem to think he owed Snow and David anything, and considering that their arrogance and spitefulness had played a hand in his death after which they'd tried to cover up their guilt by naming their son after him and shoving Emma at Hook under the shared-but-for-different-reasons self-made delusion that the pirate had to be one true love, so they'd hadn't just helped once again fuck up their daughter's shot at a happy beginning... well, he didn't owe them anything. They owed _him_ , but he didn't seem comfortable with that either, or didn't believe they were being genuine... just like Emma.

It was an uphill battle for sure, and one that wasn't looking anywhere near ending with the wedding reception here that she'd planned and never got to carry out for Anna's _second_ attempt at tying the knot what with the apocalypse and her daughter having barely time to grab a burger at Granny's following a quick shipboard ceremony before sailing off to somewhere beyond the barrier spell that now kept Storybrooke as isolated as it ever had been while magic fixed the fabric of space and time.

So isolated that she couldn't even open a portal to send the people who never wanted to be brought here with her casting of the Dark Curse back to their kingdoms in The Enchanted Forest or to help The Land of Untold Stories refugees return to their realms. At least, not for a few months yet, and without a curse to keep everyone in a muddled _Groundhog Day_ haze, cabin fever was setting in even without it being the dead of winter.

Snow let out another sigh.

She felt like a fraud handing out blankets, the only thing she ever seemed able to do to help people in need since coming to Storybrooke. In Fairytale Land she'd been a hero again and again. She'd saved the day. Here she just seemed to fuck things up whenever she tried to help. She was a terrible mayor and even on the moral leadership thing, she'd been an abject failure it seemed. Hell, she couldn't even use her true love to save the day with her and David's sapling. It should have grown into a beautiful magical tree like the one that transported Emma here as a baby, but instead a not even real phantasm of Regina's evil half snapped it in two easy-peasy and it was now just a broken twig with withered roots wrapped in a handkerchief in the bottom of her keepsake box with her grandmother's diamond broach, her mother's tiara, and the one feather that fell off her wedding dress when she found it Gold's shop before Fiona turned the rest to ash.

 _She hadn't even been able to save her dress for Emma._

"Penny for your thoughts?" Archie drew Snow out of her musings and she winced in apology.

"Sorry, I got distracted... and I need a nap," Snow told the therapist sitting on the adjacent cot and moved from her position to mirror his while stifling a yawn. It had been a long night. "Thanks for fitting me in, Archie."

"Well, I had to be up early to get Pongo settled at the Pet Shelter and make sure all my patients have their medication," Archie replied, "and you looked like you had a lot on your mind yesterday."

"I did. I do," Snow groaned and looked around the auditorium as she began, "So much has changed since Emma broke the Curse, and I suppose I keep waiting for _her_ to change. And I feel guilty that I am, because that's not fair to her. I feel... ashamed that I meant what I said to her in the Echo Caves. And that I refused to help Neal get back to her because things hadn't turned out for us the way I'd dreamed, because she was this... reminder of how I failed as a mother and I wanted a second chance to _not fail_. And then we _were_ reunited, but it ended up being her sister who went back in time, shared an adventure with me and Charming and found a connection to that world that Emma had rejected after our... camping trip. And a connection to us, to our story, beyond just being born and put in that wardrobe."

Snow looked her hands in her lap with dismay. "Emma isn't wrong that I liked that version of her better even with all of the... obsessive behavior and separation anxiety panic attacks. Hell, maybe I even liked those, or didn't dislike them as much as Emma being so... _chill_ as Henry would say. Anna freaked out about losing people, would do anything to get them back. And, okay, in retrospect I do realize that I generalized a singular obsession with Hook to include all of us so it was all a lie. But..."

"That lie made you happy," Archie finished for her. "It made you feel secure. You were certain that your daughter loved and depended on you, on your presence and your support and encouragement, things you were never certain of with Emma and now feel like you're back to square one with her in those awkward weeks after her return from that year in New York with the events of Neverland fresh in both of your minds."

"Basically," sighed Snow. "And no matter how much I try to make it all up to her, to connect with her, she knows that she can't be what I want her to be."

Archie sat back a little, sitting his notepad on his crossed legs before relating, "I remember growing up, knowing I could never be all my parents wanted me to be. Which was maybe for the best. They weren't particularly good people. But as a child that hurt deeply, trying to please them and always falling short of their expectations. I knew that I was different, that I lacked something they had - though later I would realize it was something I had that they didn't - a conscience. Though that didn't stop me from trying to stop them from harming others by harming them."

After a pause, Archie continued, "And after that, consumed with guilt, I took the Blue Fairy's offer, looked to her as a surrogate mother, to finally bring out the goodness in me, make me an instrument of her wisdom. But again, I failed. I failed her. I failed others who counted on me. And that ate away at me. Until recently. Until truths were revealed that none of us knew."

"And then?" Snow asked, curious.

"I realize that it goes both ways. I never got what I wanted from my mother and father either: parents I respected, looked up to, who would be proud of me and supportive for trying to be the best version of myself that I could. I never got what I wanted from Blue either: someone to guide me onto that perfect path. But that's okay.

"Part of me feels unburdened," Archie expounded. "All my life the conflict inside of me has been between conscience and selfishness, hating my parents for who they were and what they wanted me to be, hating myself for not standing up to them, for using deception, thinking it was justified if it was for a good reason, and what that meant about me, if I really was no better. I took all of that confusion, guilt, and anger and let it influence me raising Geppetto which he then passed on to Pinocchio. Some part of me recognized all of that, the toxicity that I was passing on, failing at Blue Fairy's task... even if that failure might actually have been what she wanted."

With a shrug, he stated, "So realizing that we were free of a prison we didn't even know we were in, I suddenly thought about my parents and I wanted to cry for whatever happened to them to make them that way. But I had to smile, because I was free of whatever tropes they got stuck in, fates they couldn't escape. I still felt angry at them, but for the first time in a long time I wanted to love. And I was hurt that Blue used me and that there was suddenly hope for others to have lives free of the pain I and others tied to me endured.

"And then I stopped for a moment, confused, and had to ask myself 'what is this?'"

"And what was it?" asked Snow.

"Just being human," Archie answered. "I spent so many years as a cricket trying for an easier way to quiet the turbulent emotions, the dark ones inside my head that made me fear becoming my parents, that I began forgetting what it is to be human. And if I forgot that, how could I, in good conscience, council people? My ability to fully grasp those gray areas of emotion had grown foggy, and because of that I failed your daughters."

"Lucky for you, they're not _your_ daughters," Snow reminded.

"True," Archie conceded, "but I understand what it's like to be both the child who's a disappointment and the parent who committed unthinkably selfish acts under the delusion of doing the right thing, and there's always fallout from that, Snow. I made amends with Geppetto, but our relationship was never the same. And I know August tried to do the same and that the short time he spent as a boy again helped Geppetto at least try to instill some better qualities into him, but none of us were ever going to share the bond we once did, not knowing what my deal with Rumpletiltskin cost Geppetto, not knowing what a burden Geppetto placed on Pinocchio and the lies he kept to do it, not knowing the man Pinocchio grew into who betrayed Emma, the princess tasked to save us all, because he carried on that legacy of selfishness, seeing only the end result rather than her own happiness, her own free will to live her life until the appointed time."

Shaking his head, Archie told Snow, "I don't want you to carry such a legacy, Snow. I kept Geppetto's secret because of my guilt and people suffered. Emma suffered. You carry baggage from both of your parents, from your mother who was not the saint your father made you believe she was in the hopes of, I can only speculate, overcompensating to smother Eva's selfish, ambitious, and cruel qualities in you that she had taken notice of in the days before her death."

"Just like I tried to do with Emma using that spell before she was born," Snow wilted.

"Which is why you need to break that cycle, Snow," Archie stated. "Just as repetition reinforces repetition, change begets change. We were stuck with the same stories being recycled over and over, the same definitions of true love and happy endings that got the point of literally spawning realms with the exact same stories using different souls. It's understandable that people would be adverse to change, especially those who weren't given knowledge to understand that change. But one step at a time, one small change will bring another and another. With the people at the edge of town. And with your family."

"I want to believe that," Snow told him. "But I don't know what to _do_ to make that change, Archie. Every step forward is two steps back, Archie! I even went to the library last week to look for books that might help. Belle wouldn't issue me a library card or help me find what I needed," she related with a groan, "so I had to sit in those uncomfortable chairs for hours looking through books while she watched _Up_ on her phone! I swear, she really does hate me."

"You're right, Belle dislikes you intensely," he nodded. "But you did threaten to murder her son who was born only a few days earlier in our world and was kidnapped because of your daughter's attempt at helping Belle by taking her to the fairies while insisting out of a rather hypocritical prejudice against her child's father that he was responsible for the growth acceleration potion, and those threats were delivered simply to more hastily return your daughter's unharmed lover who had the day previously revealed his cold-blooded murder of your father-in-law, for which you and your husband blindly pardoned him while still holding rather vicious grudges against Rumplestiltskin for less severe crimes he committed against strangers."

While Snow grimaced, Archie continued, "There's also the fact that you left Belle pregnant in a box and didn't even consider her when you left The Underworld or afterward until she woke up and could be rather systematically brainwashed against her husband by Hook and your daughter, none of you considering _her_ change in behavior and personality any more than Emma's... perhaps with less guilt on your part simply because you have a history of only associating with Belle for quick academic solutions to problems, seeing her as your personal Siri rather than a person with feelings and a need for companionship."

"Regina's right!" Snow moaned and dropped her head into her hands, "I'm a terrible person!"

"You're not a terrible person," Archie argued. "You're just far from the perfect person you let people in your life convince you that you were. And a consequence of that is having more issues than most parents have to work through with their grown children, one of which has an emotional disability and the other deep unresolved emotional issues with her parents from before Anna altered the timeline that include the revelation that her birth family are from a world of fairytales and magic. If Emma felt uncomfortable reconciling that before with the help of her parents, she's even more-so now, _and trying to fix any number of problems with a fairytale wedding or a knighthood is not going to help_."

Snow grimaced and picked up her pillow, hugging it in her lap. "You heard about that, huh? It's just... things are becoming increasingly unstable in town politically. There are people who want change, change back to the old ways, and if something were to happen to me and David..."

"I agree, it's not an ideal situation your family is in," Archie nodded, "but you need to discuss that with Emma. Have you even talked to her about the potential consequences of you and David sharing a heart? What it would mean both for your family - your brother's well-being - and retaining an uncontested line of succession should we have to return to The Enchanted Forest? Or assert that claim here to counter any coupe attempts?"

"No," Snow conceded. "I mean, not so specifically. But it's not like the worst possible outcome hasn't been voiced. I mean, Zelena hasn't exactly passed up opportunities to joke about 'accidentally' mowing David down while he's writing parking tickets and taking us both out, 'bonus points' if I'm driving somewhere with Neal and plow head-on into a wall, killing my son too. She really is an _awful_ woman."

"An awful woman with a magical personality disorder compounding what an MRI suggests is a hereditary malformation of the brain seen in scans of psychopaths," said Archie. "Her mother was a mass murderer who ripped out hearts. Her father was a serial rapist carrying a moral-destroying curse that caused her to essentially murder her twin in the womb. It's remarkable that even without magic she isn't out slaughtering forest dwellers or keeping them her storm cellar to make dresses out of their skin. But the miracle of this world's medicine, psychotherapy, and transferring her magical terrorizing into serial Internet trolling... well... it's a work in progress, but she hasn't kidnapped any babies yet and truth be told, even though George is right that she should be locked up, Aurora and Philip's fear of her seems to be keeping the barbarians at the gates as it were."

"She does still make a mean stink bomb," Snow agreed, "that temporarily transforms people into Flying Monkeys."

"Don't get Dr. Whale started on _that_ ," sighed Archie.

"I'm not thrilled with it either," groaned Snow. "It really doesn't make me feel good that she's the only thing standing between those fanatics and them storming the outlying farms with whatever 'manifest destiny' homesteading idea Arthur preached before his death. It makes me feel even less good that Emma has to deal with his mess while all I seem capable of doing is _handing out blankets_."

Shaking her head, Snow continued, "Zelena and Belle aren't wrong with their insults. I used to matter. I used to... be strong and people respected me, found hope in my bravery. But ever since the Curse broke... I don't know. I battled with my identity for so long and it feels like even though I chose to be Snow White, I decided too late and everyone just sees me as a school teacher with a toddler who screws things up. And the funny thing is, there was a time when I was so tired of _being_ Snow White that I was willing to take Regina's deal and retire to a farm with David in another kingdom to just be ordinary, but _he_ convinced _me_ that it wasn't what I really wanted, what I _needed_ deep down. Is it... wrong that he was right? That ordinary is _boring_? That it makes me feel like a failure on top of all this... _failing_ because I can't get people to _not_ see me as Mary Margaret, the bumbling fourth grade teacher who wears JC Penny and makes bird houses? Or as Regina sees me, still that spoiled little girl."

Instead of answering, Archie asked, "Is it possible that you projected this feeling onto Anna? That you're doing it to Emma as well? You fear that a dream of being ordinary, of giving up the birthright of royalty and adventure isn't all its cracked up to be and if they settle for that they'll ultimately be disappointed and then it will be too late to get that 'happy beginning'?"

Snow let out a sigh. "I don't know. Maybe? Emma's already struggling to shake off her sister's identity publicly. People knowing they're twins doesn't mean they just automatically trust Emma again. And... _oh_ ," she blinked. "Me being Snow White again doesn't mean they'll just automatically trust me either."

"And having a few losses on your record," Archie pointed out, "doesn't help that, I know."

"The sapling thing really let everyone down. People don't trust me the way they did to defeat the bad guys," Snow lamented. "And now there's this threat of some evil opportunists ripping apart the kingdoms that David and I worked so hard to unite and bring peace to and had such hopes of that heralding in an age of prosperity and progress that our daughter would carry on for the next generation. It was supposed to be a... a _golden age_ for Misthaven, bringing about change that would spread across the continent. But instead we got a curse that destroyed half of it, threw the other half into political chaos with ogres at their gates, and turned my family into this... _mess_ where I'm the same age as my daughters, one of them is cursed and married to a pirate who murdered my father-in-law, the other one has an illegitimate child fathered by the son of the Dark One and raised by my stepmother who cast the damn curse, and I'm _still_ supposed to be the better person, the optimist, who unifies everyone - _and I keep failing_ ," she concluded, bursting into tears.

"Well, I'm not an arborist," shrugged Archie, "but I suspect that it just couldn't thrive in timeline that came after its creation. It was made of pure true love magic and with your official meeting changed, the magic tainted-"

"It wasn't as strong," Snow grimaced. "That's how I feel. And if I feel that way... what hope do I have of succeeding? If George and this Tremaine woman want to take us out..."

"Everyone feels weak sometimes, Snow," Archie told her as he offered her some tissues. "I felt that way after Geppetto's parents were killed. And when I couldn't stand up to him to tell you and David the truth about the wardrobe. But that doesn't mean I'm intrinsically the weak person my parents told me I am, the scared kid that the Dark Curse brought out in me when I let Regina bully me about Henry. And you're not the spoiled child she says you are either.

"Though, I can't speak to the matter of updating your fashion sense," Archie amended, "as I have been rotating between the same five sweater vests for over thirty years. But I have noticed a trend, particularly amoung the Untold Stories folks, of mixing and matching their native attire with this world's fashions. Perhaps you could swap the cashmire for rabbit fur sometimes or those wool poncho coats for a cape. I believe Purbeck now has a contract with a rather clever cobbler who makes deer skin boots with rubber soles from old tires he buys as scrap from the junk yard."

"I suppose I could use some boots..."

"Sometimes just one little change makes all the difference," nodded Archie. "Think of Emma and her red jacket? The strangest things can give you the confidence you need to be the person you need to be. Even just to talk to Emma about the things no one wants to talk about. But first, you need to accept that she might not be willing to compromise to sustain a kingdom she feels no allegiance to, even if just to act as her brother's regent. Whether Emma has any desire to get married one day or not, it should be on her terms, not to provide good PR to retain supporters who lean toward more traditional beliefs, who are uncomfortable with her relationship status or Henry's legal status."

"I know that," groaned Snow. "But _someone_ has to take on that burden, Archie. It can't be Anna. If they're on the fence about Emma, they're not going to ignore laws that eliminate a child created by a malevolent spell from inheriting anything, let alone a throne. If Anna could be cured of that curse, maybe, but married to a three hundred year old pirate who killed my father-in-law, turned his stepson over to a child-abusing demon and his pedophile groupie for spite, and tried to kill everyone more than once? They'll show up to a wedding for the open bar, but they won't show up to _that_ coronation. The turnout was bad enough at mine... although, to be fair, everyone was separated and Zelena was trying to murder us... and not keeping her locked up and throwing Regina in with her hasn't exactly helped with the hard-line support even if a lot of people see her as the lesser of the evils because she likes running water and keeping the maternal mortality rate bellow ninety percent."

Snow let out a sigh and replied, "I'm just so tired of trying and failing, Archie. I've lost my people's respect. I've lost so much time with Emma, getting to know her. I don't even know how much of her sister that I was getting to know is actually Anna and not just... her reflecting other people's emotions and desires and if we'll have any kind of connection left when she gets back. I've tried to meet with her in the dream realm, but she never shows up. Last time I got Killian instead and he said she was just busy with some adventure in Agrabah and he was trying to haunt Gold's dreams.

"I swear, that man is such a child. Why did I support my daughter marrying him?" groaned Snow.

"Because your daughter had a serious case of arrested emotional development," Archie stated, "even more pronounced and literal than Emma's. They seemed to be on the same wavelength. Yes, maybe that was magic stacking the deck in Hook's favor, be it Zelena's kiss curse or Anna's actual curse, the whole time travel meeting in the past thing, or some perfect storm combination of the three. But you didn't know that. You wanted your daughter to be happy. You still want that.

"You want her sister to be happy too. Which might not involve ever sitting on a throne. I know it's hard to consider the end of a centuries long unbroken line, Snow," he allowed, "but that was an unchanging world that no longer exists, not by the restrictions that kept it that way. We can change, as much of this world has. We can embrace the civic mindset on which this town was fashioned, without Regina as a tyrannical imposed mayor, of course. Or we can find a compromise. The limbo state we've been existing in since Emma broke the Dark Curse, and more pressingly since Fiona was defeated and there has been time to take a breath from constant crisis, can't last forever, you're right. Something will give. Someone will win. And you can step back, accept that your standing as someone who speaks for the people and has their support has diminished to the point of you being ineffective or even a detriment to the fight, or you can shake off the blows that have knocked you down since waking up, buy a new pair of boots, be Snow White, and kick some ass."

Snow blinked and tipped her head. "I can't believe you said 'ass', Archie."

"Well, it's a brand new world, and in this one Archie Hopper says 'ass'," he grinned, amending, "And speaking of, we need to both get up off of ours and start letting people in and, demoralizing as it may seem, handing out blankets. Which it isn't. It means more than you might think. But only if the actions that follow confirm the authenticity of the gesture."

"Which always putting my family before the safety and well-being of the town doesn't," Snow grimaced as she stood up. "It's not an easy choice."

"No, it isn't," Archie agreed while pulling on his coat. "But heavy is the head that wears the crown. And is that really a burden you want to place on Emma without her being fully aware of what it could mean?"

Before Snow could consider answering what was obviously a rhetorical question anyway, Archie was slipping out the front door - and Henry was ducking in, hauling a dufflebag inside and brushing snowflakes off of his scarf.

"Hey, Grandma! You look tired!"

Snow groaned a little, responding, "Neither your aunt and uncle nor your parents have done anything to teach you tact, Henry."

"Mom says tact is just a grown-up word for 'lying'," he shrugged.

Snow didn't bother asking which 'mom' he meant. It could be either of them. Instead she directed, "You can put your bag down over there and help me with the folding tables at the back for the food trays."

"There's going to be Granny's frozen lasagna for diner isn't there?" Henry asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Just be glad," she told him, "there's more than the meatloaf."

* * *

An incessant nudging just bellow her bellybutton pulled Emma fully from the haze between sleep and wakefulness and though not particularly thrilled at being woken when the bedroom was still dark, she still smiled a little at her daughter's stirring.

Though the smile faded a little with annoyance as she felt callused fingers tap against her tummy eliciting another flurry of fetal Morris Code.

"Really?" Emma groaned ,peering over her shoulder at Neal even though it was too dark to see him and he chuckled against her shoulder.

"She started it, I swear. Woke _me_ up. Not sure how you slept through her whole gymnastic routine!" Neal defended.

"Experience and necessity," Emma sighed and moved her hand from under her pillow to press against the curve of her belly and feel, if obviously less pronounced, Charley's little kicks through her tightly stretched skin. That was the recent development of the last few days that found Neal looking for any excuse to touch her small but growing belly, and as big of a pest as he could be, his enthusiasm was mostly endearing. Mostly. It was hard to catch that vibe early on the frigid morning of an approaching Nor'easter that had the town in state-of-emergency mode.

And on that unfortunate note, any further quiet family bonding was interrupted by obnoxious blaring from Emma's phone on the nightstand, which elicited another tumbling routine in her womb as she reached to silence the offensive thing. Clearly, the new most recent development in the baby's gestation was a sense of hearing. Emma vaguely remembered being aware of such changes when she was pregnant with Henry, but not taking the time then to appreciate that meant she had a healthy fetus growing into a fully aware baby.

When she had the time and her attention wasn't required elsewhere, Emma did allow herself to relax and focus on that squirming little proto-person with a sense of wonder and maternal accomplishment that she hadn't with the fearful, depressing mess that was her first pregnancy. Which usually led to a lot of guilt and complicated emotions and hormone-induced crying fits over whether or not she deserved this child, this second chance, and how unfair it all was to Henry who should have had a childhood knowing his was loved instead of the weird, isolated, controlling one Regina gave him that led him to try looking for her even before he got that book, aware that she might reject him.

No child should feel like that.

Feel the way she did. And Neal did. But Henry had and they couldn't change that, just spackle over it with some fake memories that were fading more and more as time passed into something like half-remembered long-ago recurring dreams. They'd both fucked up and what did they do to deserve this? Okay, maybe stop reality from imploding, but what had they done _for Henry_ that it was okay to get a do-over with another kid?

But now was not the time to ponder those questions and sort through that guilt. Now was Sheriff Swan time.

At 6 A.M. on freak'n Valentine's Day when even small town law enforcement usually caught a break after only a few hours of sleep because of stupid night patrol, Emma thought sourly as she put on her glasses and read the Emergency Alert text.

"Damn it," she groaned while texting her father and Regina and informed the bleary-eyed man beside her, "the storm's arrival has been moved up to afternoon. We're going to have to start everything now, so it looks like lunch at Granny's before she closes up and then on to the station to pull an all-nighter manning the phones, assuming they keep working."

"Figures," Neal sighed while rubbing sleep from his eyes and turning on the beside lamp. "But at least you'll have something better than Spaghetti-O's by candlelight for dinner and an actual bed," he remarked and Emma grinned.

"Hey, that was a pretty great Valentine's Day and I happen to like Spaghetti-O's," she argued, throwing back the covers and wincing at the chill that immediately seeped through even flannel pajamas. "Also, as I recall, you got lucky. And it's not like there's any place _really_ romantic in Storybrooke in the dead of winter, anyway. Besides your daughter trying to push my bellybutton out with her tap-dance routine this morning isn't exactly putting me in a romantic mood," she concluded, rubbing the achy middle of her stomach that made her elastic-waistband maternity makeshift uniform pants even more unappealing than usual.

Neal laughed, catching Emma on her way around the bed and tugging her in closer so he could lift up her top and note the obvious, "You're bigger."

"I'm _always_ bigger," she grumbled. Even if bigger was still small enough to hide under winter clothes in the most frigid part of Maine's winter when there were no desks or large shopping bags to hide behind, she was _definitely_ bigger than with Henry, because apparently even after over a decade, her body remembered that it had done this before. Pretty soon she'd look like a fat Cabbage Patch kid the way her bellybutton was aching, not helped by Charley's kickboxing practice this morning.

"That's how it works, unfortunately," Emma concluded with a scowl, rubbing at her noticeably less shallow navel. The only plus, she supposed, was not being stuck wearing over-started t-shirts and scratchy denim jumpsuits.

"You say 'unfortunately' and I say 'adorably'," Neal countered before kissing her tummy.

"Yeah, just wait until the first summer heatwave when I'm big as a house and cranky and can't sleep and have to get up to pee every fifteen minutes and we haven't had sex in weeks," Emma snorted.

"I'll still love you!"

"Yeah, I know," Emma conceded and leaned down to kiss her bed-headed baby daddy, lingering just a little to inhale his scent, allowing a momentary indulgence in the evolutionary quirk that, according to Neal according to Belle, pregnant women loved the way their man smelled. But it might just be that it was still a novelty being up close and personal with a Neal that showered regularly and used shampoo that didn't come in a stolen cheap motel room bottle.

Unfortunately, a return text from her father that he was on his way to pick her up killed that mood.

With a groan, Emma pulled herself away from the morning activities she'd been previously planning - if with a bit more sleep first - and went to pee and brush her teeth instead. There was no time to even get in a nice hot shower to ease out her sleepiness and pregnancy aches, though the frigid cold of the outdoors would probably work for the former at least. She settled for quickly rubbing cocoa butter on her bump to try holding off stretchmarks a bit longer and brushing her hair.

There was no time for even minimal makeup, but unlike her sister, she was not going out in public with her hair looking like she'd just woken up on the floor of a crack house. Emma had standards in both personal hygiene and men that she was not going to compromise on just because good hair care took time away from good sex. Well, from the memories she didn't want to have and tried to repress, she wouldn't call the sex her sister had good. Maybe it was considered good 300 years ago and her sister's only comparison was Emma's brief and fumbling teenage fling with Neal, a list of angry one-night-stands, and whatever Walsh was... which included an ass fetish that now made sense with the monkey thing.

"What about my ass? Does it look bigger?" Emma asked on her way out of the bathroom, dressed only in a sport's bra and the most comfortable cotton underwear she had that still felt like they were going to start crawling up her butt crack by midday.

"Do you want it to look bigger?" Neal retorted warily.

Rolling her eyes, Emma ordered, "Just get yours dressed. If I have to go out and round up forest people, you have to have go and set up beds and kennels to keep them and their also flea-infested pets from freezing to death."

Groaning, Neal got up and took an armful of clothes into the bathroom leaving Emma to contemplate sweaters to put on over her uniform shirt that now had very few useable buttons. At least her nipples had stopped standing at attention at random and inappropriate moments, so she only had concealing her belly to deal with.

She settled on a cream-colored cable-knit turtle neck that was a bit on the large side to go with her department issue weather gear. It wasn't the leather and skinny jeans look she'd adopted to look badass, but everyone pretty much knew by now that was a rookie-on-the-job act since her sister started adopting her own ridiculously feminine fashion sense to assert some sad sort of independence against Hook's leather and unwashed hair fetish. Seriously, it was a miracle Anna didn't have lice and scabies to go with her nun-sheik blouses and floral print skirts, Emma snorted to herself while snagging Neal's favorite purple scarf from the chair by the radiator.

"If you weren't so adorable being swallowed up by that thing, I'd accuse you of being a thief," Neal teased, returning from the bathroom.

"Hey, at least I didn't spill coffee on you to get it."

"Low blow!"

"Accurate blow!" Emma corrected and he rolled his eyes while she put eye-drops in her own and then put her glasses on "I'll text you when I get a break, see if we can get an hour at Granny's before the Snowpocalypse."

"Sounds good," Neal agreed, "though it'll probably be a double date with your parents. Which, you know-"

"Awkward," Emma groaned.

"Especially the part where even Granny knows you're pregnant and your mom doesn't," Neal pointed out, opening a drawer to find a different scarf for himself.

"I'm getting around to it," Emma argued, "so you better not tell her! Even if she tries to bribe you with a knighthood."

"Yeah, yeah, I won't. Like I even want to be a knight. Unless I get drafted because you and your dad start a war," Neal retorted and pulled out a beige and blue checkered one.

"Well, _I_ won't, but I can't promise for my dad since he started the last one with his not-really-dad and I'm certain there's unresolved stuff there," Emma shrugged, searching for her warmest gloves, "since he wasn't able to follow through with choking the guy to death and Aurora and Philip did straight up betray him and Mom, and since Hook's been off-limits for revenge-killing for awhile and not even around if he wasn't, and Dad hasn't gotten to sword-fight anyone since the not-snow-related apocalypse..."

"Yeah, I don't get your dad," Neal shook his head. "Or _my_ dad."

"And _that_ ," Emma declared, snagging his scarf and wrapping it around his neck, "is one of the many reasons I love you. These silly princesses might swoon over knights who need to swing swords around to remind the world that they have functional penises, but I like my men secure enough in their masculinity that I can do the phallic symbol swinging in the family."

"Oh, ha ha!" Neal snorted, adding, "Seriously don't though, and keep your father's in his scabbard, or better yet in the car. I still haven't bought renter's insurance on the Library space and that clock towers is like a magnet for assholes with a magical property-damage fetish."

"I'll really do my best," Emma insisted. "Besides, my center of balance is on its way to being totally fucked, so I'm not looking to schedule any medieval-weapon-related conflicts until I've popped this kid out, and preferably after the leaky tits and chapped nipples phase is over, because I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as nursing armor and the chainmaille would just chaffe like a bitch."

"Cute, Em."

"You won't think that when you see my leaky tits and chapped nipples," Emma retorted, "but I'll love you anyway."

"Love me now?" Neal asked with a grin, leaning his forehead against hers.

"You know I do. Especially for not insisting I stay home and rest like a good little wifey."

"Well, you're not actually my wife, so..."

"Now I really am worried about you hanging out with my mom," Emma joked, arms around his neck. "I don't care if it's to ensure peace in the kingdom or some other bullshit I am not buying, I am not enduring another February wedding."

Smiling, Neal retorted, "So, what you're saying is, you're warming up to the idea of a warmer season ceremo-"

A horn honked and Emma kissed him swiftly then declared, "Duty calls! Thanks for the scarf!"

Neal's groan carried into the hall as Emma hurried out, heading downstairs. Today would suck, but Neal always managed to lighten her mood when it was soured by the stupidity of her work sometimes. He'd always been good at that and she was relieved to find it and other things hadn't changed, some aspects of their relationship even improving with age, life experience, and obviously the whole honesty about fairytales being real thing.

Opening herself up to loving Neal again, no restrictions, hadn't been easy even after the apocalypse-stopping-true-love thing. Acknowledging her feelings - and his - was one thing, but building a life from that was something else entirely, reality rather than fairytale. That love, after all, was founded in a different time when they were different people, and who could say if enough of those young(er) and (comparatively) innocent kids remained to build that into something lasting? Especially with the crazy family, magic, a teenage son, and a very distractingly active baby on the way.

So far so good, though. Sure, there was always that fear in the back of her head that it would get snatched away - the consequence of bad life experiences, obviously, that Anna had been able to more easily shrug off - but Emma was trying not to listen to that and plan for happiness instead of tragedy. Her life was far from perfect or what she expected or even maybe wanted, but she was finding happiness in ordinary day-to-day stuff with a partner who was supportive because that's just the kind of guy he was, not because he expected some sex-related reward or knighthood for it.

What they shared was nothing fancy, that Emma wouldn't deny and did acknowledge seemed strange to a lot of people in her life here who expected more out of romantic, especially true love, relationships. What she shared with Neal wasn't endless grand romantic gestures and public displays of gratuitous affection like her sister or even her parents who weren't quite as bad as being unable to be apart for more than a minute without suffering separation anxiety but still came as a package deal most of the time. It was quiet and simple things like a borrowed scarf and kiss before heading off to a chilly day of work doing things that also inspired them, fulfilled them without need of hand-holding and constant spit-swapping or Face Timing.

Maybe that wasn't enough for some princesses around here, but they'd been brainwashed as far as Emma was concerned into an fallacy of partnership that was really codependency. Emma believed that had the real deal and apart from a few family-related magical glitches involving portals and other realms, it was quiet and ordinary - but not in the traditional 1950's dynamic type that her sister seemed to favor or in the big house in a nice part of town with matching rings on their fingers that her parents would prefer for her.

Not that Emma was opposed to rings or what they represented, just currently what they represented for a lot of people around here, particularly the ones she was going to have to chat with today about temporarily settings aside their fear and/or hatred of the great Satan called central heating.

"Time to save the world, one smelly forest-dwelling monarchist and drunk pirate at a time," Emma sighed on the way out the front door.

Snow flurries were already falling when Emma climbed into the passenger seat of the patrol car and grabbed the cup of hot chocolate and bag of donuts her father had waiting. Emma and David still had their differences, still had some unresolved issues over choices both had made in their lives, but they did try to put that stuff aside when duty demanded a united front.

And, of course, that he bribed her with donuts helped tremendously. Emma found herself easily bribed by food these days, and probably David was taking advantage of that, but she also knew her moods could swing rather wildly too, so she couldn't blame him. He'd actually been more supportive than she'd expected when he found that he was getting another grandkid. He'd asked if she was happy and then hugged her - and then confiscated all the caffeinated coffee from the station that she sometimes, in her weak moments of getting too little sleep, had stolen a cup when she knew she probably shouldn't.

"Oooo! From the _bakery_. And they're still warm!" Emma cheered and began devouring one as David snorted and pulled away from the curb.

"Good morning, Dad. Thank you, Dad," he snarked. "I'm sorry your Valentine's Day plans have to be scrapped, Alderman Under-sheriff Nolan, but it's our duty to protect the town. I promise to make it up to you by babysitting next weekend."

"Good morning, Dad. Thank you, Dad," Emma parroted back. "I'm sorry your Valentine's Day plans have to be scrapped, Alderman Under-sheriff Nolan, but it's our duty to protect the town. And _hell no_. I love you and I love my brother, but my day's shot too!"

"You said you didn't have plans after the movie night was canceled."

"Going out plans. I still had planned on eating Chinese food while watching a movie at home on the flatscreen," Emma insisted, "with Neal, not alone in my office at the station on that old AV Club piece of shit TV."

"Well, I know I may not get pop culture," David huffed, "but I'm not so out-of-touch you can't watch it with me, you know. Your mother has actually made me watch _From Here to Eternity_ more than once. Hence looking forward to that also. I have to admit, I'm a bit relieved it was canceled, not because I've seen it a half dozen times, but not having to worry about catching you and Neal making out in the back of the movie theater like you were teenagers again."

Emma wrinkled her nose and defended, "We never made out in movie theaters. Thanks to Merlin, I have a childhood phobia of getting molested by movie theater ushers - that I should probably work through at some point, but since Storybrooke doesn't actually have a movie theater, it's probably not a pressing issue, and I'm not a PDA slut like my sister. I wouldn't make out at the Town Hall surrounded by people even in the dark.

"And, anyway, it's not about you. I left the movie at home," she concluded.

"I'm sure the video store has another copy we could borrow."

"It's not _From Here to Eternity_."

"Well, whatever it is. Or something similar."

"Believe me, Storybrooke Video doesn't have anything similar unless there's a secret dungeon back room I don't know about, which I'm pretty sure there isn't or my credit card bill wouldn't have so many of Hook's Cinemax movies on it," Emma stated, to which her father just looked bewildered. She rolled her eyes. "It's a porno, okay?"

"Oh," David answered, but it took a moment for the realization to hit and his face flushed. "Erm... I suppose not."

"Dopey found it at some flea market in Boston and he's been renting it out," Emma explained. "It's supposed to feature fairytale characters. Mostly animated. I'm not usually into pornos, but I'm kind of intrigued by the whole disgruntled Disney animators take on-"

"Okay, okay, you don't have to explain any more!" David cut her off.

Emma snorted. "What, no law enforcement locker room talk? Here I thought you and Hook bro'd out about stuff like that, sharing overly embellished sex stories half plagiarized from _Penthouse_. Hook always made it sound like your boys' nights out were kind of sleazy."

David groaned, gripping the steering wheel in annoyance as he continued out of town, "I never had 'boys' nights out' with Hook! Doing my job or him tagging along uninvited do not count as any kind of 'bro-ing'. Bro-ing requires adherence to a code, and pirates consider those-"

"More like guidelines?" Emma prompted with an amused smirk, lost on her father.

"Yes, exactly. We did not _bro_! We are _not_ bros! He's my son-in-law and I tolerate him and maybe I even act somewhat... fond of him, but only when I am stressed and sleep deprived or your sister is in the room."

"And sex deprived enough to buy _Penthouse_ and bribe Sneazy into not telling Mom?"

David threw a balled up napkin at his snarky daughter. "Just for that, you get to try negotiating first with the stubborn forest people _and_ the boat people."

"Awwwwwwe, but they like you more!" Emma whined.

"No they don't."

"Okay, maybe they don't," Emma shrugged and sipped her hot cocoa. "But, seriously, it sounds like you and Mom would enjoy this one. Regina got it last week. She said the Evil Queen is obsessed with dildos instead of apples so you can see where that revenge story and true love's kiss leads..."

"I don't want to know that," David objected. "I don't want you watching animated versions of your mother and I doing... kinky things, Emma! And I bought that magazine for Hook because we were on patrol and it was raining and he beat my paper with scissors."

Emma rolled her eyes. "The degree to which Hook manipulates you is _sad_. He literally told you he was only helping you and us find Henry _because he wanted to fuck me_. Why couldn't your chauvinist side have come out defending me against a sexual predator instead of giving your marriage blessing to said barely reformed rapist? I'm sure if he wasn't worried the grandfather murdering thing would call off the nuptials, he'd have inquired about the dowry and you'd have offered Jack and Jill's cow."

David threw her an unamused look. "I didn't agree with marrying a woman myself for her dowry. You can disagree with some of the choices I have made and see them as sexist, but I have never and would never consider a woman property like that."

"Yeah, you're just so progressive that it didn't occur to you a guy born three hundred years earlier wouldn't be," said Emma with another role of her eyes, "even when he acted like a misogynist prick around you and Mom all the time. I don't wanna hear how you thought it was just a macho act but he didn't mean any of it and was super sweet at home and let Anna be on top and cooked _her_ breakfast and she was totally in on it all the times he violently grabbed her to drag her away from her family, insulted her opinions, and verbally debased her every time she accomplished something on her own and deprived him of the chance to be her big strong man."

David sighed. "I'd rather hear more about that porno. Better yet, how about focusing on where we're going?"

"Fine." Emma pulled another donut from the bag. "You're really going to make me negotiate with Philip and Aurora? Cause I should warn you, I might punch Aurora in the tits. She really gets on my nerves. Civic duty isn't worth the aggravation!"

"Maybe not, but it is our duty so you can't go antagonizing them, Emma," David reminded. "And it's also not our place to judge that they are intent on living by the laws of our birth world. We try to ignore them and let them be as much as we can, so negotiations are always delicate."

"Also, the goat thing," Emma sniggered and David grimaced.

"Yes, the goat thing," he sighed.

Regina was still dealing with the matter of a goat that got squished by Nemo's airship. It might be impossible to take on City Hall and win, but some forest dwellers had been drawing out the matter of that dead goat, refusing compensation in the form of a new goat or money or housing... and yet clearly stealing goats from local farmers. And the one llama that was actually an emperor... though he actually just fell in a pit trap set for deer while stumbling around after getting into his uncle's still.

In short, The Enchanted Forest was a nasty, smelly, unsanitary place if you weren't living in a castle, something Emma hadn't the opportunity to really appreciate until she had to make visits to Little Camelot. It smelled like the _Jolly Roger's_ head in Isaac's fake world after being frequented by a hundred sailors plus a strong wiff of sour goat's milk, only about 100 times worse.

"I think I'm going to be sick before we even set foot in the damn place!" Emma moaned and held her nose as someone's flock of very woolly and wet sheep in the road had brought them to a halt, forcing them to get out and try herding the animals. "I thought Gold's lanolin shit was bad!"

"You develop a tolerance," David shrugged and gave her a concerned look as she gagged. "If you're really not feeling up to-"

"Don't even start. I'm pregnant, not an invalid. I've had all my shots. And I'm not going to drink any of their nasty-ass bark tea," Emma huffed, trudging toward the side of the road. "Let's just get this over with."

"All right, all right," David conceded, catching her arm to help her through a ditch. "I just want to make sure that both my daughter and second grandchild stay healthy. Even if it's still rather weird that my daughter is the same age as me and has already given me a grandson who's dating," he concluded with chuff.

"I'm sure Henry would take issue with whether or not he's actually dating Grace," Emma reminded. "And didn't you know that's the second part of our family motto? We always find each other, bunch of wrongly-aged weirdoes."

"Well, our ages might not match up correctly, but at least we're not as weird as the forest people," David argued.

"Says the man who wanted to move back to The Enchanted Forest into a destroyed castle," Emma shot back, not forgetting that incident as they entered the bean field where he'd once upon a time brought her to try to convince her to give up her life and relationships in this world and return home with them.

"Well, I might have reconsidered after moving back to The Enchanted Forest into a not destroyed castle," David replied, "and realized that I missed running water, plumbing, coffee, and reliable health care for my pregnant wife. I understand wanting to maintain some traditions, but weird as it sounds, that curse gave us insight, perspective, and knowledge we'd never have had otherwise to give future generations a better life. For all it cost our generation, future ones will hopefully benefit."

"Yeah, hopefully," Emma agreed, "your granddaughter will never know a world without indoor plumbing."

"Exactly," David nodded, then startled. "Wait, _what?_ What do you mean grand _daughter_? You said it was a boy."

Smirking, Emma imparted, "No, you just assumed from the name I used."

David huffed. "Now that's just mean, Emma! You know your mother did that with you!"

"Which was hilarious," Emma grinned. "And, anyway, you got a tomboy, which is better than a son. Mom got a girlie girl in my sister. And Henry gets a sister so it's less likely he's gonna feel like he's getting replaced by a do-over kid, and my sister's pregnancy turned out to be a demon so we're still mini-Hook free. It worked out."

"I suppose it did," David conceded, then mused, "and nicknames are good. Your mother won't be upset that you ruined her family's naming tradition."

Emma snorted at that. "I hadn't even thought of that. I'm still not sure if I should be annoyed that you guys called me 'Anna' in public after Mom got you to agree to 'Emma'. But you obviously told Granny both times."

"Actually, it's charmed ribbon that re-stitches itself into the baby's official name," David corrected. "Most people don't have talisman that tell them the sex of their firstborn, and most people have more than one child. Some merchant from Shangri-La exports the stuff. By the time we were back in The Enchanted Forest and your brother was on the way, it was his son running the business. Granny actually has a side-business making those blankets now. Or she did while Nemo was able to import the ribbon. I'm sure she'll get a new supply in and make you a blanket for the little princess' coronation."

Emma just rolled her eyes again.

"Have you picked out a name? Or are you open to suggestions?" David asked over the bah-ing and jangling bells of the sheep which were now following them.

"Henry picked her name," Emma answered. "We thought it would, you know, make him feel more included and less jealous."

"I detect an implied insult," David observed.

"No, that's just me breathing through my mouth to block out the smell of sheep farts," Emma retorted sarcastically and glared around her at the sheep which were now less following and more surrounding and jostling them around again. "Why didn't you bring that magic crook or your dog?"

"I still haven't found Peep's crook and I didn't know there would be sheep," David defended, shoving several out of the way and barely avoiding a pile of poop.

"Whelby would probably just end up food for someone's insane half-wolf guard dog anyway," Emma considered of a case a few weeks ago. "If there's _one_ of those, there's more of them. Give me a regular old pitbull any day..."

"No doubt," grimaced David before asking, "So is Charlie short for-"

"See, now, you're not getting that out of me," Emma cut him off. "If Mom can't know this kid's official royal name because of a stupid tradition, than neither can you."

"That's mean. She doesn't even know that you're pregnant. And she's the one that can't keep secrets and has this silly superstitious tradition."

"I'll tell her you said that."

"You'd have to tell her that you're pregnant first."

Emma smirked and told him, "Whatever name ends up on her birth certificate, we're calling her 'Charley'. With a 'y'. It's from a song."

"A meaningful song?" David deduced with a slight smile and Emma groaned.

"Yeah, okay, fine." she paused to shove another sheep out of the way. "There was this Lou Reed album stuck in the Bug's radio," she explained, "when Neal stole it. It was pretty corrupted accept for this one song 'Charley's Girl' so I finally pried it out because I couldn't stand listening to it over and over. I broke the tape getting it out, along with the radio. Neal was really bummed. I felt bad so I stole another tape, which let's be honest, wasn't much of a crime by then. And even though I was sick of that album, he was so happy when I surprised him with the replacement tape that it made me happy and then he stole a Yazu tape and switched it a few days later with 'Only You' and then there was kissing, so... yeah... I'll end it there," she concluded, blushing and hating the way her father was grinning at her.

"That's adorable," David stated. "And your mom is going to be so excited! Another princess in the family!"

Emma rolled her eyes. "No it's not. It's dumb. No one's going to write a story about a stolen cassette tape. And you are not spilling the magic beans to Mom until I am ready to deal with her insane level of excitement and you know how giggly and romantic and shit she is this time of year."

"Yes, I'm aware," groaned David. "And maybe someone should write down stories about ordinary things like that. Writing down magical adventures apparently didn't help Henry's future alternate career as an author in this world."

"Because people in this world are tired of clichés," Emma retorted. "In _this_ tiny part of that world? Not so much. It's kind of their bread and butter. ButI'm peanut butter and jelly. We don't go together. Also, shit, I forgot my PB and J sandwich!" she grumbled, avoiding more sheep shit. "Stupid storm speeding up! And stupid forest people living in the forest instead of next to a road providing easy access to their stupid tents and smelly lost sheep!"

"It is quite a hike," David agreed of the muddy field. Too muddy to drive across without getting stuck... or charged with lances.

Between the old magic bean field that the refugees avoided settling on because of their fear of portals and prejudice against giants, a river, and the old granite mine gorge accessing the camp wasn't a walk in the (literal) city park, especially in winter, the topography provided a natural defensive parameter, as if one was actually required. Arthur had obviously set it up that way. And now the people here saw those living on the outside as some hostile enemy that wanted to forcibly convert them.

"I'm sure if they tried peanut butter and jelly they'd like it at least as much as butter," David carried on her metaphor as he tried to find a tree branch. "But even if everyone else around here doesn't or won't broaden their romantic horizons, your mother and I want to know this stuff. Just because meeting and falling in love with Neal didn't involve murderous guardsman and magic spells, that doesn't make it any less special, Emma."

"Really? Because it feels like it," Emma complained. "Any time I get asked about our 'courtship' I get a 'oh, is that all?' look. People disagree with you, Dad."

"Yes, well, _people_ don't matter."

"And you wonder why George is gathering said 'people' against you," Emma quipped and he scowled.

"You know what I mean, Emma!" David groused. "If random strangers don't think your story measures up to theirs or their standard of true romance, then so what? You know it's real. And it's special to you. Which makes it special to your mother and I. And, you know, the second time around I met your mother half drown in a stream with my ass hanging out and I didn't know my own name, and our courtship consisted of physical therapy sessions and a fake book club, if that's all we ever remembered, that would be just as special as what actually happened."

"Which isn't-"

"What originally happened, I know," David cut her off, "but you were part of that universe, you fell in love in it too, so both the stories you remember reading, your mother and I want to hear about them, because they were important to you and gave you hope or inspiration that made you fight to survive, even when you didn't even know that's what you were doing. We could have lost you in that battle with Fiona and never even known it."

"I doubt it's really that simple," Emma argued and then swore as one of the sheep started nibbling on the end of Neal's scarf leading to a tug-of-war. "Are these things half goat or something!?"

"Just hungry. The grass is pretty depleted and what's left is frozen with the rain the past couple of days," David observed.

"Yeah, well, maybe I can poof these things somewhere else..."

"As great as that would be, no offense, Emma, but I don't trust your poofing skills for one sheep let alone three dozen of them. They might turn up looking like the picture Neal drew of that mutant chimera."

"Yeah, I don't either. Regina says that's part of the problem," Emma grimaced, shoving another. "SHOO! HEY! STOP TRYING TO EAT MY SCARF, YOU CANNIBAL!"

"She's probably right then," David nodded, finally finding a branch large enough to use to push the particularly bold sheep away from them. "You need to believe you can do it, that it's not some talent your sister had that you lack. Just like you need to believe that we care about where you came from after arriving in this world, the things you experienced and how they made you _you_."

After a pause, he amended, "And maybe we'd also like to know what experiences made those original versions of us parents you looked up to instead of being disappointed in."

Shoulders slumping a little as she wrapped the scarf around a few more times, Emma replied, "I'm not disappointed in you." Off her father's look, she conceded, "Okay, I'm a little disappointed. But it's not entirely on you. I know magic was involved."

"Magic that wouldn't have gotten involved if we'd made better choices."

"Yeah, exactly," Emma nodded, "so the original Snow White and Prince Charming were fucked up in their own way. They just seemed to have a lot better sense of what justice is and were a little less brainwashed on what a happy ending is and didn't seem to have a creepy obsession with shoving me toward it whether I was ready or not or even with someone good for me as long as it satisfied the traditional 1950s housewife model where I needed a man to find my feminine side, which was defined by dresses and flowers and learning to cook for him after giving him morning sex and with the expectations of marriage and babies. It's insulting and _maybe_ it was some subconsciously - or intentionally inserted - _prank_ on Zelena's part, because even though she's a crazy, homicidal bitch who raped a guy to get knocked up for some weird revenge-by-irony plan, she's at least always made clear she thinks that's all a bunch of arcane, patriarchal bullshit that keeps women in their place and George probably took most of his prison speeches from listening to her ranting at Regina about the anti-feminist fairytale agenda whens he was locked up. But it's _still_ insulting.

"And it wasn't just me," Emma continued. "Mom was Regina's cheering squad on dismissing all of the problematic stuff, because, I guess, if she could pair Regina up with her fairy-sanctioned soulmate it was like it erased her culpability in what happened with Daniel. And her pairing me up with Hook at the same time felt like trying to erase the shit I went through in my life in this world, trying to pretend that Neal didn't really matter either, was just some substandard love on a path toward finding my actual soulmate, so then neither of you had to feel bad for what you did.

"That's what's disappointing," Emma stated in a huff while shoving yet another a sheep out of the way. "Knowing that you both did that before, that the capacity for doing something so selfish was in your hearts and that thanks to Zelena and my sister it just got amplified. And that thanks to them I lost any chance of confronting my parents about that original choice, finding out what their real motives and intentions were with Neal or with the spell you guys had cast before I was born, how or why they were different from yours, more or less forgivable. All I have is some _revised_ version of the truth going back to the moment you met - or _didn't_ meet."

Emma let out a sigh and concluded, "I loved them... and I never got the chance to be _angry_ with them."

"So instead you're extra angry with us," deduced David.

"Maybe. I don't know. I'm sorry if I am."

"You don't have to be sorry. I get it," David assured. "I didn't get closure with my father over what I thought was him abandoning me and my mother and even if it wasn't intentional I'm sure I took part of that out on Neal, projected that feeling of betrayal on him even though it wasn't my place and both of those betrayals turned out to be a lot more complicated and tragic than I'd known then."

"I guess we all get fucked up by our parents whether they're around to do it in person or not," Emma sighed.

"Depressing way of looking at it, but there may be some truth in that," David grimaced.

Emma paused in her steps to look at her father. "I know that you're both trying to find a better balance between being supportive and being challenging. And it's okay if you don't understand or agree with some stuff. I'm not looking for you guys to support everything I do, to suddenly start liking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Just... know that I'm not gonna get food poisoning and don't meddle too much, trying to cut the crusts off if I want crusts or switch the raspberry for grape, even though I usually prefer the grape..."

"Hungry?" David asked with a lopsided smile.

"I just want a kid that likes what I like to eat!" she complained and her father laughed.

"I think you'd have to ask your mother about that," said David, "but that would require telling her that you're pregnant."

"Or I could ask Dr. Whale. Or Belle. She doesn't like me, but she loves sharing boring information more than she dislikes anyone," said Emma, digging through her coat pockets for snack possibilities and settling on a cured magical meat stick that the Dark Star now sold. Apparently her DNA also craved weird animal proteins she had never heard of.

"She also hates your mother," sighed David, walking again.

"Yeah, that too. I'm not getting in the middle of that when I already lost points for not arguing with Mom over leaving Hook to babysit her A) like a grown woman needed babysitting and B) like it was a good idea to assign the guy who had very recently punched her in the face and shot her. I'm not going to deny that I've made some bad judgment calls and just used Anna wanting to hop on Hook's aged meat stick as a defense."

David gave her a disgusted look. "Thanks for that. I used to like beef jerky."

"And I have memories of my sister using her mouth as Hook's dick holster," Emma stated. "Thankfully, Neal is circumcised and he doesn't have hairy, lopsided balls, or mermaid vagina scars on his dick, so I can generally manage a blowjob without PTSD symptoms."

"Now you're just being mean," David groaned, but couldn't not ask, "Why would mermaid... ah... scars?"

"You can't say 'vagina' can you?"

"Yes I can."

"Then say it."

"It's weird! You're my daughter! Forget I asked!"

Emma snorted. "Whatever. Merfolk live in the ocean. They can't have rip-currents pulling them apart when they're mating or there would be no little mermaids, so the males have a sort of... ah... trident thing that penetrates the cervix and expands and the females have reverse hooks like on a porcupine quill. No idea if getting human legs gives them human genitals."

"For Eric's sake, I hope so!" winced David before asking, "And... Anna knows?"

"That her husband caught a mermaid in his net in Neverland who'd been vandalizing his ship and forced himself on her, but the joke turned out to be on him... unless mermaids can get syphilis? Yeah, she got a hold of that potion Mom used to turn into a mermaid and used it for one of their sick role-play sex marathons. Went out to sea, had Hook catch her in a net and everything. I can't eat fish now without seeing him eating out my twin sister's fishy va-"

"That's... nauseating on several levels," sighed David.

"Tell me about-"

The sheep suddenly butted Emma's elbow, causing her to drop her jerky and it snatched it up.

"DAMN IT!" She huffed at her father. "How can you like these mangey things!?"

"They follow you wherever you go. It makes me feel important like a prince or something," David joked. "Also, mine were less mangey and aggressive."

"Yeah, well, you certainly have more chemistry with them than my sister and her fish fetish husband have," snorted Emma. "So I get it, I guess. They have to do kinky bestiality and exhibitionist shit to really get satisfaction out of bumping ug-"

"Can we please stop talking about your sister's sex life!"

Emma shrugged. "Sorry. Hormones. I'm seriously horny and I'm stuck with you tonight so I can't even masturbate to a porno in my office. And I've been having awful PTSD dreams about my sister's nauseating sex life but instead of Hook, she-me is banging Big Bird.

"But I think my point is," Emma told him, "my sister's marriage is fucked up. Anna calls it 'challenging'. I call it 'emotionally exhausting'. Maybe that works for a woman who's a half-empty emotional glass and a man with the emotional control of a toddler throwing a sippy cup - full of rum," she snorted. "But I don't want a relationship that feels like a tug-of-war with constant battling over who's right, who knows best, and a weekly game of who lied to spare the other dealing with some harsh reality or unpleasant history.

"I don't want to be protected from things not being perfect or have to continually revise what perfect is to make the person I'm with happy. Or just following someone's lead like a stupid sheep." Emma glared at the sheep that was still chewing on her snack and it _bahhed_ back at her, unconcerned with her annoyance. " _Or_ look like a homeless junkie from _Trainspotting._ I just want to eat take out on the couch," she continued, "watching a stupid porno with someone I'd watch it with just to make crass jokes about it even if we weren't planning to have sex afterward and be fine with that instead of turning into a whiny, alcohol-pushing frat boy who thinks all interactions with the opposite sex entitle him to the expectation of getting laid and women always want to give it even if they say they don't because they just don't understand their silly female emotions."

"I want that for you too," David told her with a grimace. "I don't want to think about or know you're doing those things, but I do want you to feel like you're in an equal and open relationship."

"Yet you supported your daughter that you thought was me being with a sexist asshole. You still do," Emma reminded. "And I'm sick of that filthy pirate being treated and spoken about like he was always some kind of misunderstood anti-hero by everyone he hasn't screwed over and even some people he has like they should be thanking him for learning the true meaning of forgiveness or something and having to put up with his pirate groupie boat people and bar sluts!"

David sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "People see the side of the story they know, Emma, that was presented to them, and I know we did a lot of that presenting. And no one knew your sister possibly lacked the emotional stability or capability to know her own heart and best interest. You had certainly shown yourself the kind of person who wouldn't stand for abusive behavior, so-"

"It was just easier to presume everything you saw was an act," Emma grouched in return.

"I know you don't want to hear the same thing over and over, and I wish I had a more justifiable reason," David told her, "but I had to convince myself that Hook hung up that macho act at home to be okay with that relationship and make your mother happy by helping make you happy. I regret that now. And I don't want to make that mistake again.

"But I do hope for your sister's sake that you're wrong about her, Emma," David continued. "I don't want the first years of Anna living her life to have just been living someone else's in every respect. Her name, her identity, her job, she borrowed all those things from you. Her love, she believes that was hers and she wanted to show that by marrying Killian again, and I want to believe what she borrowed from you allowed to perceive something real, even if its more potential than fully formed true love."

After a pause, David dared, "And don't let spite over that or taking a stand against Enchanted Forest traditions you oppose taint the ones you used to dream about in this world. I know marriage and a family was something you considered back then, even if it was still a distant future dream."

Shrugging, Emma answered, "It's what people did. What I saw them do. Get married. Have children. I watched couples, families and envied them, wanting that normalcy. And hating them for having it. I think maybe Anna took the whole suburbs and white picket fence thing from those clichés, but I never really wanted the clichés themselves, it was just what they respresented and the only depiction I knew from TV that looked better than the situations I got stuck in.

"Well, TV and maybe that family in Minnesota that kicked me out after Lily broke in," she considered. "It was Anna who got me to finally run away, so maybe that house and that family inspired her taste in architecture and conservative clothes. They were the only ones ever genuinely nice to me up until they weren't."

"I wish I could go back and change that for you," sighed David with a pained look.

"I used to wish I could too," Emma remarked, "but then I wouldn't have ended up in Portland and met Neal and had Henry. My path here would have been very different. I would have been. And I like who I am. Which is maybe the only thing both Anna and I got out of that Wish World thing. I'm not meant for skipping through flower fields, I'd rather traipse through a field of weeds with smelly sheep to do something that matters for the greater good. And Anna... she's meant for having sex in flower fields and doing something for her own good. Which, granted, I don't understand her liking that person any more than the fake personality, but I suppose I'm never really going to understand how her curse-messed-up brain works any more than she understands mine. I just wish she could be better that. Or at least _want_ to be."

"Maybe she'll surprise us when she returns," David considered.

"Yeah," snorted Emma lightly, "maybe she'll off Hook and replace him with his de-aged Wish self who somehow escaped getting un-made by the gods. From what that bird goddess said, it sounds like he was a far better Hook who risked his life to play with his kid instead of sending other people's kids to be tortured to play with his dick. Although, if the Rapunzel fairytale holds up, he also might have raped his baby mama and just framed climbing in a window and wipping his dick out in greeting as 'seduction'."

"Well, we can hope," David agreed, "but I think we're stuck with the dickish one no matter what happens."

"Yeah, probably. He's like Flying Monkey Herpes. Even when you think it's been destroyed for good, magic just keeps bringing that shit back. Speaking of..."

They'd reached the outskirts of the encampment finally. Logs made from cut trees now made a wall that they'd integrated into the natural topography of the Wildlife Refuge and featured a large gate flanked by guards who wouldn't be out of place guarding a wicked witch's castle... and if memory served had been some of Zelena's victims that survived the Battle of The Cannery...

* * *

Snow watched more people starting to file in with suitcases and pillows and blankets from home. Hopefully, most of the town would fair all right, but the coastal communities around the two marinas were predicted to have flooding and wind damage and everyone was at risk of burst pipes and no power or heat while the agricultural area would have to get around on tractors and snow mobiles (if anyone had those) until the roads were plowed or the snow melted... plus the ice that was supposed to follow not long after the colder front, so that was fun as it would make driving even on cleared roads dangerous and more trees and power lines would come down.

Blizzards were bad back in The Enchanted Forest, but there was so much that could get damaged here that magic couldn't fix. There was a price for DVRs and heat that didn't come from burning trees and ashwinder eggs. But at least it was something immediate to focus on besides scheming royals and family drama.

And here they just had the chicken kind of eggs, served scrambled this morning courtesy of Granny's and it was helping set up the makeshift buffet on folding tables at the back of the hall where she spotted Henry showing Alexandra Herrmann how to hand out the empty plates to queuing residents, exercising as much patience as could be expected of a teenager with a three and a half year old.

Snow had to admit that she liked Henry better when he was behaving like a considerate, well-mannered kid than his childhood of presumptuous thievery and school-skipping or his more recent entrance into tween and teenager-hood that involved rebellion, secrecy, selfishness, and sometimes just being a moody, petulant brat.

In retrospect, Snow wasn't certain if that was a normal phase for Henry or Hook rubbing off on him; Anna had, she considered, begun behaving in a similar fashion after she began dating the pirate who was clearly never going to mature beyond the phase of 'manchild', but it wasn't so strikingly obvious a shift until Emma returned, reminding Snow of the generally considerate - or at least socially well-behaved most of the time - woman who could get caught up in a funk over something, certainly, but never acted like an addict or a drama queen or a snotty teenager about it; and when it came to her personal, particularly romantic life, Emma preferred to keep both the highs and lows private in contrast to her sister's public tantrums and make-out sessions.

Detouring toward Ella whose focus was on a stroller with a cranky infant, Snow reflected on the past few years romance-wise, wondering that she'd probably seen Anna and Killian make-out like their plane was going down more times during a single lunch hour at Granny's than she'd spied Emma and Neal even share a chaste peck on the cheek in a month and a half. Not that Snow spent as much time around them together as she did the other couple, what with Emma still being uncomfortable around her and Neal having his own job(s) that didn't lend to them being joined at the hip like her sister and her husband who went from an unemployed tagalong to her deputy.

Neal worked part-time at the pawnshop, allowing his father to take Gideon some days so Belle could focus on whatever research she did at the Library undisturbed - or Gold could focus on whatever artifact restorations or landlord issues he had that Snow preferred not to know about. He'd also recently begun renovating the second floor of the clock tower building, previously uninsulated storage space that had turned out to be used as Hook and Nottingham's illegal gambling den back when Belle's brain tumor made her less picky about her subletting, apparently.

Snow wasn't certain if Belle wanted to expand the Library upstairs for a magic-related section, add apartments, or if she had some other plan in mind for the large space since they didn't talk, but from what Snow had heard, August was helping for free as part of his penance for a number of infractions against Emma and Neal over the years and also just as practice with his woodworking skills after apprenticing under Geppetto for a more steady paying and skilled job than his dime-store novel writing.

The two men clearly did not like each other from what Snow had seen of them bickering at Granny's on occasion, and she tended to agree that if Gold cast that truth spell on August again, his nose would be as long as a broomstick denying that he had any romantic interest in Emma and just wanted to be friends and make things up to her. Even Mary Margaret wasn't clueless enough to have not seen him very clearly trying to get in Emma's pants, and saying that was playing a part to hide his true identity and rile her up into believing or whatever nonsensical argument he'd delivered was... well... bullshit.

A few months as a child hadn't cured August of that crush, nor had the particular lunch hour when Emma came in as he was about to leave, punched him in the face, and called him a lying, whoring, gambling-addicted son-of-a-bitch who owed her twenty grand, eleven months in prison, and eleven years back with her son that she wouldn't have had to give up if he wasn't a lazy asshole who conned her with a bullshit story into returning to the Foster System so he could keep on not having to actually look after her like a decent human being.

Emma had gone on to announce that _The Ugly Duckling_ has more meaning if the duckling was always a swan than some magical bullshit transformation she spent another seven years waiting for, and where the hell was he when Ingrid nearly got her run down by a car or perverts grabbed her in allies - jerking off to _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Shitty Guardian Angeling?_

Needless to say, Emma still had serious anger issues with August and Snow had decided to stay out of that. Just as she was trying to stay out of Emma's relationship with Neal... until her recent rather spectacular failure with bringing up marriage and a knighthood. Maybe it was just hard to grasp a concept of life and happiness that didn't just automatically involve marriage and children as part of that dream. It had been Ella's after all, her way to escape the life she'd hated - through love and companionship and trying to spread that personal happiness to all of their kingdom's subjects.

"Ella," Snow greeted her old friend - a friendship that she'd let lapse, or perhaps had given to her daughter, she wasn't quite sure. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Thomas is delivering some canned fish," Ella explained. "Not the most thrilling food item, but sardines work in a pinch if the power is out as long as they're saying on the news. And it seemed like a good opportunity to start teaching Alexandra about public service, that a princess should get involved in helping her subjects," she amended with a nod toward the toddler who was getting smiles as she performed her plate-distribution duty.

"Also... it's an opportunity to exhaust her before we're stuck inside for days," Ella admitted in a whisper.

"Good call," Snow laughed. "Granny's been watching my little prince, but I'm hoping to get some running around in the snow time later, before the storm gets here to tire him out - and to stave off my own cabin fever for the next few days. Mr. MacDonald on the next farm over took our animals so we could focus on the town's needs and there's definitely not a lot of space staying at the Inn. But David's on call with Emma and I'm going to try holding down the fort here for the worst of it."

"Well, good luck with that. I'm sure if you could keep thirty something ten year olds occupied for three decades, you can keep a room full of grown ups from squabbling for a few days," Ella encouraged.

"Oh, I don't know. I suspect the ten year olds are better behaved. And the grown ups will be more like the screaming, bawling toddlers at your daycare after a day or two," Snow replied. "Though at least people here are used to being suddenly thrown into life without all the amenities, so hopefully there will be no tantrums related to a lack of wifi or cappuccino machine."

"We're a tough bunch," Ella agreed. "Best of both worlds, that's the way it should be. I mean, going back to living by all those old ways, it just seems like a waste, like after being cursed for twenty-eight years we took nothing good from the experience, nothing to better our world - like medical care. I needed a c-section the second time around, which likely means that back in The Enchanted Forest Ella would be raised by some evil stepmother because I'd have died in labor along with her sister."

Shaking her head, Ella stated, "Just deciding our home world was perfect and this one is abhorrent because it's different or we didn't choose to come here is narrow-minded. But... our world was and I suppose still is a mostly uneducated mess of peasants fearful of getting through the winters and inbreed royals worried about getting dethroned by some long lost evil relation or it getting out that they're a secretly and thus illegally adopted pretender with no claim that will throw kingdoms into chaos. Although, when you think about it, I'd bet every royal family in Misthaven has had at least one secret baby dropped off by Rumplestiltskin to avoid a succession crisis."

"Which is probably not an argument that would go over well with most people for loosening royal inheritance laws," Snow sighed.

"I suppose your family is in a bit of a complicated situation given the amount of mortal peril around here," Ella agreed.

"To put it mildly," groaned Snow. "If something happened to me and David, Emma is first in line to the throne. But because she has an illegitimate child, it would require all the noble houses to confirm her claim and they probably would even dispute my appointing Emma her brother's regent in our will. I tried to get a decree passed when Neal was dead to posthumously declare Henry's legitimacy on the grounds that August's interference was the only reason they weren't married, but the fact that he had returned to Storybrooke with a fiancee and that Emma _appeared_ sweet on Hook even before his death made that impossible to pass."

Ella smirked slightly. "And now they're living in sin - not that I think there's anything wrong with that personally - so either they get married or they don't and since Anna is forbidden to inherit anything as the product of a malevolent spell-"

"The fate of my kingdom's future may depend on Emma's marital status," Snow nodded, "which I know is a burden she doesn't want. Either being pressured into marriage _or_ ruling a kingdom. She's a child of this world even if she was born in ours."

"Well, maybe Anna will find a way to break her curse," Ella considered. "Surely, the noble houses will rethink the laws."

"As I told Archie, married to a three hundred year old pirate who killed my father-in-law, his own father, numerous other people, not to mention the raping and plundering and thievery and all the children hat while he stood by doing nothing Pan abused, including his stepson?" Snow reminded. "Many people are still not a fan of Regina's and don't think she deserved a second chance. The noble houses, at least, tolerated Killian because I have a son who could rule after they declared my daughter unfit with her bastard son and rake of a husband. Making Killian admiral of our hypothetical navy was, essentially, putting lipstick on a pig as far as they're concerned. And I'm not sure, honestly, Emma marrying the son of the Dark One who was also born centuries ago, even if he then spent centuries as a child in Neverland which compared to time passing here or in The Enchanted Forest might actually be a lot less time... But considering I married a peasant and willfully deceived our people about David's true identity and parentage for years, even after winning the war, I suspect there's only so much our supporter will tolerate."

"Thomas' father was certain the houses would revolt when he announced our engagement," Ella shrugged, "and yes, there were those who didn't support our marriage and made things difficult for my father-in-law and Thomas diplomatically and economically. But we had the support of the average people, the people I knew, that I was one of. And lords and ladies can only retain so much power and wealth if their tenants go on strike. Farmers threatened to give their earnings directly to the crown if their landlords didn't support our marriage, arguing that if magic brought us together, then that superseded any peerage laws, even including the King's approval."

"Technically, Rumplestiltskin brought you together," Snow pointed out.

"Yes, well, they didn't know that. Thomas didn't know that either," Ella reminded. "I feel bad about it, obviously, and what it nearly cost our family. But I don't regret that throwing 'magic' around allowed me to marry the man I love and help enact laws that better reflected the needs of the peasants, and particularly girls and women who are generally destitute without a dowry and can only look to magic for a chance at the love and happiness others take for granted as right, or at least something everyone should strive for in our world.

"Emma was right," Ella recalled. "If you need a fairy godmother to make loopholes for you to even have a chance at that, then there's something wrong with the laws and customs. Everyone should have equal opportunity for a happy ending. And maybe we're not part of those books anymore that were keeping some people from that, but that doesn't mean throwing out the ideal we were sold either. We _should_ all have that right. It's also what _this_ country was founded on, wasn't it?" Ella concluded rather passionately and Snow frowned.

"Maybe you should take over the public motivational speeches," Snow sighed. "I feel like I've lost my mojo. Awhile ago, to be honest. I think that's why I focused so... obsessively on family-related matters. It was a way to avoid dealing with this... slump I've been in since the original Curse broke."

Ella gave her a concerned look and replied, "I'd be happy to be your fluffer, Snow, but I'm young and naive and by both world's standards severely undereducated - but not foolish enough _not_ to know that I'm not especially smart. I'm good at repeating the things Thomas tells me and that I read in Archie's book club, and I'm more than capable of handling a bunch of screaming little kids - but a group of screaming grown-ups? I'm out of my league, Snow. Thomas married me for my heart, not my brain - and I'm okay with knowing it wasn't just a curse making my GED tutor tell me that my post-high school prospects weren't of the intellectually academic variety. Maybe I'm cleaning toddler drool off of plastic play castles, but I'm proud of myself for doing it on my own. It's more than I would have done for myself back home as a princess with servants waiting on me and days spent organizing balls and diplomatic tea visits. I got a prince and I got to do more than just spin around in ballgowns - which is maybe what a lot of girls dream of..." she concluded with a shrug.

"I know it's what I wanted as a girl," Snow recalled. "But I'm glad I didn't get that part of the dream. I learned so much during my years as a bandit, things I never could have with tutors as a princess stuck inside castle walls. My father... he always thought he was learning so much, exposing me to so much, with our royal visits, but you're right. It's an insular life that isn't all that different whether you're a king with an enchanted ship or a sultan with a flying carpet. It's all just different window dressing with the same privilege, the same cluelessness about how everyone else gets by."

Shaking her head, she sighed, "I wish I could get Aurora and Philip to see that."

"Well, we're not on the brink of war yet," Ella shrugged. "A few more months and the barrier will be gone and they can leave if they want. Maybe the ogres will all succumb to a sudden plague."

"One can hope."

Thomas arrived then still bundled against the cold, the prince relating, "Everything's unloaded out front. We should head back to my father's, make sure all the second floor storm shutters are secured."

"Makes me miss castles. Made of stone. Tiny windows. None of this shutters and plywood stuff," groaned Ella and she called to her daughter, "Lexie, it's time to go! Thank Henry!"

The toddler rather adorably gave Henry's legs a big hug and then trotted over to her parents who wished Snow well before heading out through the growing crowd.

"She's so cute," Snow remarked with a sigh.

"From what I understand," Neal's voice startled her from behind, "you could always try for another. Seems you've got a fifty-fifty chance of the sugar and spice over the snails and puppy dog tails."

Snow shook off her startlement. Neal could be a siddler, though he didn't seem to do it to intentionally sneak up on people. Probably it was a habit from Neverland, trying to go about unnoticed by the Lost Boys and Pan, that had helped growing up on the streets as well. He also could be surprisingly observant while also prone to weird commentary that Emma seemed to get or find endearing but which Snow just found a bit odd.

"Last time around with a Wicked Witch after us," she answered, "we thought 'there's never a good time to have another child, so let's just go for it'. Maybe that's true. But there _are_ bad times and as much as I wouldn't mind a house full of children including a little girl I could raise to possibly be less inclined to either punch men in the face or gratuitously make out with them like her aunts, I would mind it being stormed by a bunch of sword-wielding maniacs who want to blow up the power plant and force her into a corset."

Shrugging, Neal offered, "I imagine most of those guys Emma slugged had it coming, and her sister seems interested in sucking face with just the one particular guy."

"True. I've punched a few men in my days and have rather singular interests myself, just not quite so impetuous in the former and publicly indecent in the later," Snow remarked before asking, "Did everything go all right at the pet shelter?"

Neal nodded. "Yeah, Anton is helping Dr. Little organize the animals now. Sparkles was leading a round of group butt sniffing when I left, so it seems like the four-legged residents are taking it better than the two-legged ones," he concluded as two people nearby started fighting over a cot.

"HEY!" Snow snapped. "There are more beds coming! Stop acting like grade school children or I will make you both sit in the corner with orange traffic cones on your heads!"

The two townsfolk gave her a sour look, but ceased their squabbling.

"Maybe you should moonlight as a bouncer," Neal chuckled.

"I did briefly work as a bouncer at a brothel in return for room and board until a pervy guardsman recognized me," Snow recalled as she walked over to the growing stack of canned good boxes.

"Snow White worked in a whorehouse? Does David know?" chuckled Neal, following.

"Oh, I mentioned it a long time ago, before we were together, just to see if he'd blush. He did," Snow replied. "That's when I knew for sure my suspicions that he wasn't the whorehouse-frequenting Prince James were correct - or it was one hell of a memory potion or head injury he'd suffered. David was rather inexperienced. But don't you dare ever tell him I said that!"

With a lopsided grin, Neal assured, "Pretty sure I have no intentions to bring up the topic of sex with Emma's dad after his pancake breakfast interrogation."

"I am sorry about that," Snow winced. "I told David to behave, but I think he felt like he held back with Killian, that he didn't get to express his fatherly duties to the degree he wanted and I got my way the first time, so he was going to get his with you. And know things probably deserved to be the opposite. But we're both still getting a hand of this parenting thing, particularly the grown-up children part. Surprisingly, the diapers and teething are much easier."

"Yeah, well, wait until you experience teenager-hood," Neal pointed out. "Then Emma and Anna won't seem nearly as confusing. I spent a couple hundred years stuck at fourteen and I still don't get Henry's moods half the time."

Frowning, Snow considered, "I think he still has a lot to deal with regarding Regina that he's put off. They weren't in a particularly good place before Neverland, but whatever happened there and that awful box... well... I'm not sure how much of his forgiving Regina was genuine, just the emotional turmoil of all of it, or for her benefit so she'd continue to strive to be good without him, and I'm not sure that Henry is either. I assumed that Emma was helping him sort through his childhood issues given her own, but it seems that _Anna_ didn't do much in the way of emotional parenting and mostly just let Henry play video games or made him go sailing with Hook when he was staying with her - which he never complained about, the way he never complained about how Regina neglected him. Her being the Evil Queen and hurting other people, sure, but as a little boy who had no one but Regina to love, no friends or other family, I'm not sure he ever saw how _he_ was mistreated. Not until Pan got into his head, anyway."

"And now he feels guilty that letting Pan get in, giving him his heart led to so many problems for everyone else," nodded Neal. "Yeah, I got that. And I get it. I'm the reason the Darlings got sucked into that mess. John, Michael, they never got to go back to their parents who died thinking they'd all just disappeared. They grew up just enough to be useful while Wendy was a brainwashed prisoner that they've got to deprogram and try to help her get a normal life. All because I stole some of their bread."

"All because I told a secret," Snow shrugged and sighed. "One seemingly small choice can cause so much pain."

"I never meant to cause Emma pain by leaving her," Neal stated.

Snow gave him a small smile. "I know. And I never meant any harm to come you or to rob you and Henry and Emma of happiness by refusing to help you get back to them, Neal. Honestly, I was rooting for you and Emma when you first came here. I really did hope that the love you'd once shared was true enough to overcome the obstacles between you the way it was for David and I with King George and Abigial. It seemed like destiny repeating itself in a way."

Exhaling, she continued, "What we did was both unkind and went against our family's deepest values, and it played a part in costing you your life, Henry his father, and Emma her true love. And losing time with the ones you love is something we both know all too well. I just hope you can look beyond our actions to see that we love Emma and that our mistakes, they don't reflect on you or how we feel about you and Emma being together."

After a pause, Snow amended, "But you are worthy of knighthood, Neal."

"Yeah, I don't know," Neal shook his head. "I'm no Lancelot or Paul McCartney. I'm just a guy who likes to draw and fix old things that a certain segment of the town population consider demonically posessed."

Snow smirked a little at that, considering, "Well, if Aurora's introduction to television was an episode of _The Kardashians_ , I can see how she might consider it a 'demon box'. And just because our world has had a rather sword-weilding-based definition of worth doesn't mean writers and artists are any less important. Well, maybe the crap August writes isn't very important," she mused, "but we always appreciated Geppetto's skills. It was a loss to David and I that both of the cribs he made for our children didn't come through to this world after all the hard work and craftsmanship he put into them - and there wasn't the time to make another before our son would outgrow it here... though," she recalled, "he did start on one when Anna thought she was pregnant. I'm not sure he kept up with that given the whole gremlin thing, even if they were still trying... or Anna was trying while Emma was sleep-walk-taking birth control pills. Anna was so mad! Although, all things considered with the curse..."

"Yeah, I guess in a less perfect world, after a couple of years, Hook's dried out sperm actually managed to get her pregnant and they had themselves an evil kid without even knowing it and Emma died without anyone knowing it," Neal remarked, "while Henry was off raising his cross-dimensional incest kid and running from the monsters her existence unleashed a half-assed Dark Curse stupidity on Seattle thanks to the more ethnic story version of Cinderella's step-aunt who was actually her stepmother because in that world she got the rich widow who actually managed to keep his fortune."

"Mother or aunt," Snow shook her head, "both seem to be awful people. I just worry that this woman will succeed in usurping Regina's office and then all the progress we've made will be for nothing. If only there was a way to get through to Aurora and Philip, to make them realize that we're not the enemy here..."

"People see what they want to see," shrugged Neal. "Not always anything you can do about it but give it time."

"I just wish that I believed we had the luxury of that," she sighed as the sound of the wind picking up gave everyone pause.

* * *

It was like walking into a Renaissance Fair after a rave that overflowed all the porta-poties... that then also tipped over in the buffeting wind.

They passed food stalls, livestock, a smithy, and an assortment of other medieval-looking vendors that were shutting up their businesses with the approach of the storm. Emma had been here a few times, unlike her sister, though she couldn't really judge Anna (or Hook) for avoiding it. Dealing with the corset-wearing misogynists, vaccine-hating blood-letters, and anyone who dreamed of having pretty good odds of dying of dysentery and required "bending the knee" to the couple who'd betrayed Emma's parents and everyone in her kingdom and looked at her like she was a freak or a whore was never fun and had thus far never resulted in anything productive.

An obnoxious prick blew a loud trumpet and hollered with a distinct note of sarcasm in his tone, "His Royal Highness Prince Consort David and Her Royal Highness Princess Emma of The Northlands approach!"

People in Enchanted Forest clothes bowed and curtsied while also giving them both the stink-eye.

"We're here to see Philip and Aurora," David stated.

The royal couple had taken over Arthur's biggest and furriest-lined tent that had a large fire pit belching smoke up into the cloudy sky. The shorter of two guards went inside to request their audience while a raven on a perch stared them down, cawing like it had been trained to dislike people who wore deodorant.

Finally, the guard returned and held the flap open for them.

Even with the chimney hole, the large tent smelled strongly of pine wood smoke, rendered animal fat, and melted wax, making Emma gag before getting her bearings. The pre-electricity era was no picnic in giant castles, but at least the draftiness took away some of the stale, stagnant air and other odors.

For roughing it royal style, Prince Philip didn't seem to mind, seated in a fancy chair at a writing desk looking like he ought to be in an episode of _Game of Thrones_. Of course, he'd been some kind of magical Asian demon monster thing for years, so this was probably high living compared to sleeping behind someone's trash heaps.

"Prince Charming, Princess Emma," he greeted. The young king met them by the fire pit and prompted, "I assume you're here about the storm. We received a bird with a note from Mayor Mills." He gestured to a teapot on his desk. "Can I offer you some tea? It was just brewed."

"Yes, thank you," David nodded with his best diplomatic expression while Emma declined.

"So, this storm business?" Philip resumed.

"Yeah, it's supposed to be a bad one," Emma explained. "High winds. Well bellow freezing temperatures. Several feet of snow followed by an ice storm. We're setting up a shelter at the Town Hall and preparing food at Granny's. Even some people living in the outlying farms are planning to use it, just because the power will be out and the roads impassable for days."

"We don't use your power or your roads."

"But you will require aid," Emma told him, "and we won't be able to use the roads to bring it here."

"You have magic," Philip pointed out. "So does your mayor-queen."

"And bad storms can disrupt magic," Emma argued back. "Especially with so much of it focused on keeping the barriers in place. More might have to be drawn out of the... ah... general supply for that, which means things like heating charms might be intermittent at best and teleportation even of goods might not be possible for a period of time."

"I see. Well, many survived back home without magic," said Philip. "The people here have chosen this as our way of life. And we have, essentially, been given little choice in where w elive it considering the curses your family cast and the ogres that invaded our lands afterward both laid waste to our infostructure and agriculture and mercinaries and pirates stole our horses and armories and fleets of ships. _You_ made our world inhospitable. And even when you returned to it, you did nothing but hide in your castle while yet another insane family member of yours threatened to turn everyone into flying apes."

"Monkeys aren't actually apes," Emma interjected, earning a glare, but she didn't hold back, "and you only got turned into one because you actually trusted Regina's wackjob sister to keep her word that if you stabbed an entire kingdom in the back, she'd take care of your ogre problem so you could spend your days lounging around your palace having servants feed you dates from those palm trees I'm pretty sure some ancestor of yours got through diplomacy with some sultan in Agrabah. But I guess you got turned into a different beast before your parents could teach you how diplomacy works."

"As if you're some expert?" scoffed Philip. "A princess in title by birth but otherwise nothing but a gutter rat?"

"Last I heard," David interjected, "a gutter rat was ruling the kingdom you got those palm trees from, Philip.

"Look, we're sorry for what happened to your kingdom. We're sorry that your people were trapped for twenty-eight years, that because of that you were kept out and unable to wake Aurora after your curse was broken. We apologized for the mess with that wraith, for trusting Regina that our world was a void of nothingness and sending it through, for how you yourself suffered in the Netherworld between life and death. I've been there briefly, and it's a horrible place I would only wish on my worst enemies. And you are not one of them. Please stop this stubborn posturing, Philip, and let us help you. I'm sure if your people understood the danger they were facing-"

"This is not what you call a 'democracy'," Philip stated, "and until the matter of our kingdom being recognized as separate and not beholding to your laws has been finalized, until all of your combined kingdoms have accepted it and signed our treaty of independence, then we have nothing further to talk about, _David_."

"Your treaty that gives sanctuary to any criminals who manage to escape justice in Storybrooke and hide here with your smelly sheep and Camelot's most wanted!" Emma accused.

"From what I understand," Philip returned with a snooty look, "justice has long been a non-entity in your town, Sheriff, thanks to your evil sister and her murderer husband that your murderer mayor put on the payroll. You want to reform your town? Do so. But that has nothing to do with us, and as long as you allow mass murderers to run things, it's rather hypocritical of you to judge us for allowing those brainwashed by Arthur to stay here, to find sanctuary from threats of extradition to Camelot where they will be imprisoned or worse for allegiances given under the duress of magical dust reinforced by mutated flower pollin, flowers, I do believe, it took months for you people to realize were as bad as pixie dust and I understand probably accelerated the growth of Belle's brain tumor given her father's occupation as the town florist caused her to frequent his shop and fill her apartment with the things."

"Yeah, okay, that was an oversight," David allowed, "but if Belle was here-"

"She would not be welcome as the wife of the Dark One and mother of his offspring," Philip cut him off. "She helped me, and I am grateful for that, but I cannot condone her choice to wed that monster and bare his children. Though I will, at least, give her and your other daughter, a former Dark One herself, the allowance of following traditions, even if the men the wed hardly makes their unions virtuous."

"Please," Emma scoffed, "like you and Aurora didn't do the spoiled royals with two backs before you could locate some bishop or friar. You're just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of us, Philip."

"Emma-" David hissed, but she ignored him.

"You think you're some model king and husband? Then why did your queen lose her spark as soon as you got back from the Netherworld? What happened to the prince Mulan spoke so highly of? Cause the princess I met was on her way to becoming a strong, compassionate woman with the help of strong women rather than those dimwit fairies who raised her, but a year alone with you, and she's back to being a spoiled, judgmental, useless little damsel who does nothing but hang off your arm and give you babies. I'm surprised she's not here swooning over how much she needs you to be her big strong man. At least my sister is cursed and her husband is a three hundred year old psychopath. What excuse do you guys have for making each other _worse_ people while preaching your true love? Did she actually bring your soul back, or maybe you're really the Incubus who infected my sister!"

"That's it!" Philip growled. "I won't be judged by a woman who bore a child out of wedlock that you share by adoption with one of our world's worst war criminals, a child who is the grandson of the Dark One and great grandson of the Black Fairy and Peter Pan. There's little more scandalous than ruined virtue. Throw in your apparently numerous liaisons with random men since giving up your child _in prison_ and your sister's disgusting tryst that your family sanctioned in holy matrimony, and you and your family are no judge of moral fortitude. As far as tradition is concerned, you're the daughter of a pretender prince, the mother of a bastard son, and the sister of a pirate's whore."

David's punch was clearly not anticipated, cracking into the self-proclaimed King's jaw and sending him tumbling back. Before Emma could even get past her own shock and intervene with magic, the two men had drawn swords and guards came rushing in, roughly grabbing David and Emma.

"Get your hands off her!" David snarled.

"Escort them to their... carriage," Philip ordered and glared at the pair of sheriffs.

While Charming had plenty of not-so-charming retorts, the guards followed through before he could voice any of them.

* * *

Regina spent the morning in her office on the phone coordinating with the volunteer fire department, the harbor patrol, the hospital, the retirement home, and the utility companies before joining in the fray at the adjacent Town Hall that was filling up as the weather began to grow inclement outside.

The building was full of vaguely familiar faces, people she'd seen at many an assembly but had never bothered to learn their names and given the nature of her job and personality probably never would bother. She did spot Neal, however, who seemed to have taken over from Snow and was delegating tasks to the other volunteers. Henry's father seemed to have thrown himself into helping out in town wherever a hand was needed, usually with mechanical things or accounting. He could probably get certified by Mr. K as a CPA, though considering he seemed to spend his free-time sketching about town, Regina supposed Neal wasn't the sort of personality to be happy behind a desk crunching those kinds of numbers even if he had the skill for it any more than Emma would be happy seated upon a throne even if it was her birthright.

They were an odd pair at first glance. Perhaps no more odd than Regina had been with Robin. And though Regina was probably never going to feel a deep abiding affection for either of Henry's birth parents, she didn't dislike either of them or begrudge them time him as she had once. Back then just having to share the same space with either of them, but particularly with Henry as well, was excruciating. But that was then. Now she understood that the more people who loved her son, the better chance had of growing up to be a better person than all of them.

It also helped that having Neal and Emma here _and together_ kept the two halves of Henry's family at least somewhat connected and manageable, no longer having to play sides like that or risk being labeled relapsed into villainy. Considering how quickly and easily they had become estranged or enemies in the past, that certainly counted for a great deal. It also didn't hurt that they were _far_ less demonstrative about their romance than Emma's sister and her manwhore of a husband, and that alone was enough that she could tolerate Henry wearing his father's old thrift store scarfs.

"I didn't expect you to be running point," Regina observed when Neal finished coordinating something, which got one of his now familiar lackadaisical shrugs that she'd interpreted as apathy back when they met but had since learned wasn't entirely different than her own cool demeanor or Emma's bravado. It was easier not to get hurt if no one saw that you _could_ be hurt.

"Snow's getting the last of the food from Granny's," Neal answered, "and Abigail is out getting more medical supplies."

Regina finally realized the man Neal had been talking with was Princess/District Attorney Abigail's knight Frederick. He was a teacher or something.

"Are you staying at that... um... charming cottage of Emma's during the storm?" Regina asked, perhaps not as casually as intended from the bemused/annoyed look Neal gave her.

"Are you implying I'd be better off staying here?" Neal returned. "I know you think it's a dump. Emma's parents aren't fond of it either. It needs a lot of work still that we can't do 'til spring. But it has-"

"Character, I know," Regina sighed. "No, I'm just not looking forward to my sister staying at my place. I'm already regretting that offer and considering staying here with Henry instead, accept that she would probably try on all of my clothes and jewelry and flush my makeup down the toilet just for kicks."

"And you want me to stay with you to, what, bump her off? Or have someone with motive to blame after you bump her off?" Neal joked.

"Possibly," she snorted. "But I was thinking more along the lines of that house of Emma's being a death trap."

"Are you actually concerned for my safety?" Neal grinned at her and she scowled.

"As mayor it's my job to be concerned for every resident of this town and strongly suggest any occupying substandard living conditions that could sustain storm damage to take shelter somewhere safe," Regina shot back.

Neal flashed a grin and replied, "That's sweet, but David said I could bunk with Emma at the station over night while he stays at Granny's with Snow. He figures the phone lines will go down and people will start using pigeons so I'm gonna get some from Purbeck to keep at the station. But don't tell Emma, it's a surprise."

"That you're going to bring a cage of pigeons to the Sheriff's Station?" Regina quipped. "Probably best not to tell her, only because I can't wait to see the security video footage of her reaction. I remember her screaming like a little girl when one landed on a table outside at Granny's once. Ruined the tough image she was trying for at the time. I made some clever quip about gutter rat orphans and rats with wings and swans and some familial relation or something, but I'm too tired to recall it exactly at the moment, just that it hit the mark and she glared at me and stomped back off, presumably to her deathtrap of a car to sulk."

"The Bug has character," Neal defended.

"And is apparently getting more action than I am," sighed Regina, "from what Henry's said about the one part of your dump of a house that you did fix. Emma's 'Bug' has gone from being a deathtrap to a car shaped sex doll for automotive squatter."

"Things in the garage are... ah..." Neal ran a hand over the back of his neck, "weird. But at least Christine isn't trying to run over the mailman anymore. Belle's been researching, trying to figure out if it's a spell or the car came from some world where that's normal and there's talking tow trucks and Thomas the Train drops off supplies instead of that creepy ghost thing that speeds through at ninety miles and hour, mowing down sheep and tossing out toilet paper in magical bubble wrap."

"Yes, the sheep thing is yet another livestock problem on top of the unresolved ghost thing," Regina groaned. "But at least we're getting some supplies. I'd rather get supplies from a demonic ghost train than be wipe my ass with leaves."

"You couldn't just conjure it?" asked Neal, brows furrowed.

"I tried that when we were stuck back in The Enchanted Forest," explained Regina. "The magical price for technologically incompatible comfort was a very uncomfortable rash. So, of course, I lent the role to Snow," she concluded, well aware the other brunet was walking toward them, close enough to overhear.

"Regina! You _intentionally_ gave me that rash!?"

"You were being nauseatingly chipper and playing matchmaker," shrugged Regina.

"Yes, well, you were being mopey and wearing those ridiculously uncomfortable Evil Queen gowns all the time."

"I had to be prepared for my sister to pop in at any time and out-glam her with my villain fashion sense," Regina reminded. "It was a sacrifice I made for everyone to demonstrate my power."

"The power of what? Sequins and cleavage?"

Further discussion of that subject was sidelined when Emma and David walked into hall, both looking cold and dejected.

"Perhaps he's come to rescind _Baelfire's_ temporary pigeon-handler deputizing," Regina quipped before walking over to meet them.

"I take it things didn't go smoothly in Little Camelot?" she inquired.

"Too put it mildly," grimaced David.

"We got dragged out at swordpoint," sighed Emma.

"So, about as well as expected then," interjected Belle as the petite brunet came over with an armful of blankets. "You can't expect them to understand. I mean, look how you responded to finding out magic and fairytales are real? To everyone that came here without fake memories, it's terrifying. I imagine they feel like we're gentrifying their world. It's _not_ their world, but they were brought here with only what they know and they see very little that's familiar. They see the Old World ways being lost in favor of things that may seem as horrifying to them as it would to us if some developer came in with a bunch of hipsters and their tiny yipping dogs, knocked down the Library and Granny's to turn them into tweleve-dollar-a-cup coffee shops, converted half the parking spaces on every block to rent-a-bikes, and turned the Town Hall into a Whole Foods."

"That sounds horrible," Regina grimaced. "As bad as running a bar and wearing _denim_."

"Which is why," stated Belle, "we let them deal with this blizzard on their own. They want to be their own government? Fine. Many governments in this world do honor the expressed views of religious and indigenous communities to be self-sufficient and refuse aid from the 'outside world'."

"So..." frowned Snow, "you're saying we should let them freeze?"

"Well, if that's the _ethical_ thing to do," stated Regina, "then I'm all for it."

"That _compound_ is a refuge for criminals," Emma reminded. "People from Camelot who sided with Arthur even after his spell wore off and people from _here_ that my sister didn't bother arresting who ran off to take up the fairytale life the moment I made it clear that I was going to follow up on the filed reports that Hook threw in boxes in the evidence room because my sister's a lazy slut who wasn't going to do the additional paperwork of her _one handedi_ deputy who can't type."

"That's not fair," Regina objected. "Anna is lazy. And she's a slut. But she's by no means lazy with her whoreishness. If anything, she puts extra effort into that."

"Regina!" Snow huffed.

"Your daughter is cursed to be a slut, Snow," Regina retorted. "Deal with it."

"My brother was pretty much a massive manwhore," sighed David. "We just have find a silver lining... like she's only slutting it up with one partner. And, yes, he's a terrible person who murdered my father-"

"And handed me over to a child abusing psychopath for spite when I was a kid," interjected Neal.

"Yes, but I think we can all agree that Hook is fairly lazy at everything other than manwhoring, even this idiotic revenge plotting against your father," David retorted, "that he continues to occasionally persist at even though he left your mother to suffer in eternal damnation without any scruples, which really completely undermines his entire revenge angle."

"Exactly!" Emma nodded. "So how does it make any sense that you would want to marry a guy that left the woman he pledged revenge for going on three hundred years out of _love_ to rot simply because a younger piece of ass had come along! And, quite honestly, my sister looked like ass compared to Milah, which says Hook's whole thing was more about control, subservience, and some weird kink fucking the women in Gold's family and trying to co-opt their kids."

"You're parents are love-blinded idiots with little regard for the dead," stated Regina. "I don't think we need to rehash that. Instead, let's focus on none of us joining those dead in any icy coffin. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Cruella again. And every intention of keeping this town from being undermined by two tyrannical thugs and their puppet prince and princess as soon as it's thawed out."

Turning to Emma and David, she inquired, "Don't you still have drunk pirates to round up?"

"And make sure the mermaid prostitutes are all accounted for at the Viking spa," nodded Emma. "And I yes, I can't believe I just said that."

"They're not bad mermaids," shrugged Belle. "It's just hard to get steady, legitimate work in a terrestrial society when you don't have legs or even an Enchanted Forest human education."

"But you do have," snorted Emma, "lots of formerly lonely pirates who developed a kinky fish fetish. Wonder if they sit around comparing dick scars?"

"With all the syphilis lesion scars," amended Regina.

"And on that pleasant note," sighed Snow as the clock tower chimed, "I'm going to make a snowman with my son and hope no crazy ice witches show up and make it eat people."

* * *

It was only three o'clock, but it was virtually dark out with the blizzard getting underway and Emma was shivering as she got out of the patrol car back at the Station, along with her father who went over to his pickup to grab a few things. As she was unlocking the door he handed her the grocery.

"Basic supplies your mom packed up. Don't go eating all the chocolate tonight, young lady."

"Where are you going?" Emma asked, confused. "I thought you were bunking here with me?"

"Granny's. Slight change of plans. I'm meeting your mom there but I'll have my radio on if there's an emergency."

"If this is because of the porno thing-"

"Just make the most of Valentine's Day without the flatscreen," David cut her off, giving her peck on the cheek before he hurried through the thick, wet flurries.

Frowning, Emma carried the bag into the station... which she found lit with candles... and the bullpen's desks moved aside for a card table with a tablecloth and cans of grape soda in snow-filled bucket. Then "Only You" started playing.

"Really?" she groaned, unable to hide a small smile as Neal came out of the break room holding his phone.

"Too dumb?" Neal asked. "Should I move the other bed back?"

Emma only noticed then that he'd moved one to the other cell, both covered with additional blankets.

"Hell no! I'm not freezing my butt off sleeping alone tonight!"

Smiling, Emma shrugged her coat off and looped her arms around his neck. They shared a kiss and then another as the song came to a close... followed by a cooing sound from the direction of her office.

"Neal," she observed with a frown, "are there _pigeons_ in my office?"

In response, he shifted his weight to the other foot and flashed his best smile. "Did I mention that I've got Spaghetti-O's?"

* * *

"I actually wouldn't mind marrying you one day, Baelfire," Emma whispered into the sound of the wind howling around the station as she shifted her weight on the squeaky cot.

Of course, Neal was sound asleep against the wall, oblivious to the admission. But just saying the words aloud felt enough for right now. They were a step closer to Tallahassee... or some more complicated version of it that included a crazy cast of family members and a teenage son to go with a baby on the way.

Charley Cassidy-Swan had a nice ring to it, Emma thought as she extracted herself from Neal's embrace and retrieved her glasses and boots to make use of the bathroom - _not_ the toilet in the jail cell. Grabbing her coat from the back of her desk chair at the card table, Emma made a quick trip to relieve her grape-soda-filled bladder, then checked for messages on one of the desk phones far away from the one in her office that had a cage of pigeons beside it.

"Rats with wings," she muttered, digging into her mother's goody bag of heart shaped candies, travel sized toothpaste, floss, tampons, deodorant, chapstick, lotion and eyedrops. Emma ate several of the chocolates, figured her teeth could survive the night, but grabbed the cherry-flavored lip balm, vanilla scented lotion, and eyedrops to make sure she at least didn't wake up looking like a bloodshot crazy woman with patchy skin and peeling lips.

"Damn child proof caps," she grumbled. "Why is everything now child proof? What moron let their kid drink eyedrops?"

Finally getting the cap unscrewed, Emma lifted her glasses and and squirted a few drops in, noting an unpleasant sting she didn't expect before realizing something was definitely wrong. Squinting at the bottle in the dim light she made out little flecks of black like ash at the bottom before an unnatural wave of dizziness and exhaustion came over her.

Clearly, these were not regular eyedrops and either her mother was sneakier than she thought, or she'd screwed up her goody bags.

Emma managed to get out a gasping "shit" and stumble back to the coupled cots where Neal was still snoring up against the brick wall, the sensation of the lumpy mattress at least a last bit of a relief before the world spun in on itself into darkness...

* * *

 **AN:** Should Snow and Belle have a fight? I feel like even though Snow is the one with training/experience, that after all the times she's gotten kidnapped now, in a one-on-one fight with some of equal stature/strength that has been generally shitty to her and her husband and son for years, she would fight dirty.

 **Quotes:**

"I always knew I could never be all he wanted me to be. But I realize today that it goes both ways. I'll never get from him what I want either. It's okay. Part of me feels unburdened. All my life the conflict inside of me has been between logic and emotion. But now I think about him and I want to cry. But I have to smile. And I feel angry but I want to love. And I'm hurt that there's hope. What is this?"

"It's just being human."

\- Michael Burnham and Ash Tyler, _Star Trek Discovery_

"Just as repetition reinforces repetition, change begets change."

\- Michael Burnham, _Star Trek Discovery_

 **Next up:** What fresh hell has Emma gotten herself into?


	25. Run Away!

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: Sorry that it has been forever since I updated, and this is only a snippet of what I had intended to post by now. Life has been a pain in the ass of late between medical issues, car problems, the holidays, and my old nemesis Insomnia returning with a vengeance the past couple of months, all to make life a hectic mess. I've just wanted to zonk out in front of the TV rather than write, but I managed to get this interlude finished. It's short and is mostly a lot of Emma venting my frustrations (and a few tumblr posters' frustrations) with the warped morality of the show. The next chapter will have more plot and action, I promise.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE**

 **RUN AWAY!**

...and then spat her back out.

Ethereal dust-motes floated down like snow from a cloudless sky illuminated by an unseen sun in a dream replica of what was, presumably, The Enchanted Forest. There was a particular smell to the flora that Emma recognized from her six week camping trip years ago and from Anna's sense memories that she shared, if not quite so distinctly, of her trips to the past and to Camelot - and a more equally shared experience in Rumplestiltskin's dreamscape that came with the particular additional magical tingle of being in this dust-motey mirage.

Needless to say, Emma was not happy with the result of either her parents' screwing up their goodie bags or some uncharacteristically deceitful switch-er-oo to combat her refusal to have dreamscape Facetime with Anna. This was _not_ how she wanted to spend her unconscious hours!

There was nothing that stood out as Emma began to walk through the woods. That, at least, was enough to figure that she wasn't inside her _own_ dream.

The only dreams she ever had about this world were of being chased by an orge, falling off a beanstalk to her (almost) death, and finding herself battling Hook alone at Lake Nostos, failing to knock him out, and being raped by the disgusting pirate. Needless to say, that dream in juxtaposition to her sister's sex-related memories (and fantasies) probably meant she needed therapy, but Archie was still on the No Trust list and short of a memory potion to completely erase the past few years of Anna hijacking her life, Emma really didn't see any full-proof solution. And, anyway, that would mean forgetting the good parts of Henry growing up, which wasn't worth it.

As she continued to walk, Emma found not even a rotting peasant hovel or a broken carriage in site. But boring was better than exasperating... which is what her sister's dreams would be. That, and nauseating.

If this was Anna's dream, a version of her sister slutted up Enchanted Forest style would have come dashing out of the undergrowth already, dressed in an overly boobsy corseted peasant dress and pursued by some faceless guardsman who would have caught her and been ripping at her bodice, about to rape her, when suddenly Dream Hook would show up on a black stallion with a big dick, kill them all, and dismount his stead so she could mount his (not especially big in Emma's personal opinion) dick against the nearest tree. Or Emma would have come upon the pair fucking in a Middlemist field. Or reached a harbor and found the two fucking against the wheel of the _Jolly Roger_. Or happened upon the road to Midas' castle and found them fucking in that conjured engagement ball carriage, Anna with her red skirts over her head and gilded crocodile shoes biting into Hook's pale ass while he enjoyed the discomfort her corset caused in the form of her jiggling, pushed-up boobs.

Honestly, her sister's fantasies were straight out of the trashy romance novels that the prison library where Emma was incarcerated considered educational material - another reason she didn't get her GED. And spent her last pregnancy glaring at cactus and tumbleweeds through a prison fence instead of taking boring walks in the woods... which was apparently her only way to pass the time until the effects of the powder wore off other than sitting in a pile of damp leaves.

Maybe this was Archie's dream. Emma considered that the shrink was entirely boring enough to just dream about walking in the woods. He seemed to do that, randomly walking around with extra cups of coffee in the hopes of blindsiding some recalcitrant patient. The guy was not as sweet or harmless as he pretended to be! Just like Emma's parents or any of the "hero" royals who were the protagonists of their stories. Aurora and Philip had sure turned out to be assholes!

Emma was just glad her only interaction with them was as Sheriff and she hoped that it stayed that way. If something happened to her parents and she got stuck with their "throne", having to do the supreme monarch thing for all their absurdly loyal people, making treaties or whatever with their counterparts from other kingdoms - they'd all be screwed!

That's basically what Anna had told her when the subject came up at their brief reception dinner at Granny's. If their parents got killed while she was away and Emma was in charge, they'd be fucked. It was mean. But it was accurate. Anna... Anna could never be Queen because of the nature of her origin, not by current laws, and she wasn't the kindest and certainly not a compassionate person... but she still had a better head for the game, a personality better suited to all the spot-light-requiring pageantry of royalty in contrast to Emma's preferred place as a wallflower, disappearing into the crowd, one among many instead of _the one_ that the many looked up to. And so the manner of their conceptions hadn't been fair to them or potentially the universe, but that probably wasn't the first time birth order and other particulars robbed a kingdom of the ruler they should have had for the one that got stuck with a job they didn't even want.

Maybe they'd luck out and their parents would live long and healthy lives and then their brother would turn out to be some genius philosopher king type and Emma could abdicate to him. It's not like most people probably even wanted her, a foreign-raised princess with an illegitimate kid, to be their queen. And she 100% didn't want that responsibility. It was too bad Rapunzel didn't get transported to Storybrooke with her mother's casting of the Dark Curse; maybe then she'd have had someone to get a similar perspective from... assuming Alternate Universe Rapunzel had the same fears and hadn't instead grown up to be the villain of her story... like that confusing Enchanted Forest 2.0 mess that was like the telenovela version of fairytales or something.

On that thought, Emma found herself in a clearing with a tower that looked vaguely familiar from a clip-fest of that alternate reality future dumpster fire that Hera had put together. She had a really bad feeling about this...

A scream emanating from the tower's top room caused birds to scatter from the canopy and Emma reached for a gun she didn't have. So, not a dream, but someone's nightmare.

A rope hung from the window, trailing down through scraggily vines against the rough granite blocks.

At the second scream, Emma cursed beneath her breath and began to climb. It was, at least, easier than a beanstalk.

There were more screams as she hauled herself over the window ledge and Emma grabbed the nearest object that could be used as a weapon - a torch from the wall.

Torches and candles lit the edges of the otherwise dark, shadowy space that included a large canopy bed at the far end. It was from inside the covered bed that the screams came, and before Emma could consider physical intervention, the draperies on one side flew open and a blonde, naked woman dashed out followed momentarily by a dark-haired man.

Emma took a step forward, prepared to take a swing, only to freeze at the flash of a hook and the blonde pushing back her messy hair. Any feelings of heroism or indignation were replaced by aggravation and revulsion as Hook pushed his lover down on a fainting couch, hook to her throat, growling, "I told you, when I jabbed you with my sword, you'd feel it. Now, I can make this pleasurable, or you can keep fighting and... well... I'll _still_ find it pleasurable, but you might not enjoy it _quite_ so much. So what's it going to be, _Emma?_ "

 _That_ spiked the revulsion factor a couple hundred times and Emma growled, "WHAT THE FUCK!?"

At her outburst, Hook looked up and tumbled off the woman on the couch who didn't react at all, more like someone had turned on her freeze button in some _Westworld_ simulation - indication that the pirate was real and the 'Emma' here was a figment of his sick imagination rather than her sister looking less sickly and involved in some extra kinky shit.

Gulping, Hook responded, "Luv, it's not like that. I was just... working through some issues and-"

"Oh. My. God," Emma hissed. " _You are disgusting! I'm glad my sister isn't here right now! Even though I want to acid-wash my brain!_ "

After a moment of confusion, Hook's eyes widened and then he looked slightly relieved. "Oh, _Swan_. I thought you were-"

"Your _wife_ walking in on you hijacking your own sick fantasy of raping her _sister_ \- also known as _me_? _Put your fucking pants on, you sicko!_ " Emma pushed back her sleep-disheveled hair, adding, "And I _hope_ I don't look that much like my sister with her anorexic drug addict appearance, even in your 'romantic mood lighting'."

Hook glowered and grabbed a silken robe while responding, "Aye, on second look you _have_ been packing on the winter pounds. And I can't help what my unconscious wants: a more slender, playfully contemptuous version of you whose heart I thought I'd won in Neverland. Unfortunately for the both of us, Swan, I have emotional attachments to those memories that I can't just shrug off. It's bloody complicated! So give me a break! I didn't invite you into my dream!"

"Yeah, well, I didn't intentionally crash it, Hook," Emma told him. "My idea of beauty sleep isn't joining in your emotional attachment to a memory of threatening to rape me and obvious fantasy of following through with that threat. So spare me your complications and how you plan on resolving them."

As she spoke, Emma tore off a panel of the canopy and threw it over the magic-conjured... Emma Bot. Afterward, she observed in disgust, "And my breasts are not that big." Well, _usually_ not that big, anyway.

"You shouldn't have initially presented them in a _Wonder Bra_ then, Swan. Those modern times corset things that lift the bosom trick men into thinking it's all natural. Alas, I'd committed myself to the pursuit prior to the disappointment of your Sports Bra reveal, and as it was then a conquest rather than a courtship, bust size was only to be a temporary disappointment when I got you in my bed in spite of your refusals and then left you wanting more."

"And somehow my sister doesn't consider your 'sex for revenge and spite' motivation a red flag," snorted Emma. "So sorry that I held out long enough that you developed an unhealthy attachment and have to endure Anna's equally small tits, Hook."

"Aye, well, marriage _is_ about compromise," he shrugged. "And your sister says that you weren't intending any trickery. Rather, you suffer some deep insecurity about your body, particularly regarding your bosom, hair, and face."

"As opposed to Anna suffering severe neglect of hers?" Emma scoffed as she examined the tower, avoiding Hook's discarded clothing on the floor... and replicas of her own from their Lake Nostos confrontation that included her old red leather jacket that remained in the back of Anna's closet in Storybrooke-even though her sister had moved on to replacement red jackets with a preference for suede so she probably wouldn't care if Emma took it back...even if it was Anna's utter lack of empathy taking over Emma's guilt at delivering such horrible news to that young woman that prompted her to request a purchase rather than attempting any act of comfort.

Maybe it was better to just leave the jacket where it was, a symbol of some of the worst parts of both of them colliding in a perfect storm that left a woman dead and her daughter unable to ever meet her. She'd worn it to emulate Cleo, having no clue how to make her own persona for a job that she knew nothing about at the start of it. And she'd worn it when she came to Storybrooke because that persona she'd created from her Cleo costume made her feel strong, confident, when she was anything but. She didn't need that now. Or maybe she did. But it was as much associated with Anna now as herself, just her sister for a large portion of the town's late-coming residents, and associations with Anna Jones were generally not positive for improving community relations.

Life was much easier when she didn't have to earn anyone's respect.

"I had a job," Emma finally answered while Hook was rummaging through a cabinet, clearly for booze, "that often required seducing men to haul their asses off to jail and I was just off a job when Henry showed up. The only clothes I had were the ones I wore for the job. Don't tell me you ever _enjoyed_ wearing a fifty pound leather coat and pants on a tropical jungle island. You invented an image and stuck with it. So did I. So anyone I deceived about my breast size I had no intention of ever seeing them."

"Including Regina, I suppose," Hook smirked. "But I can't blame you there, Swan. She has an intimidating bosom. I will say that it's a pity Anna won't dig out your ridiculously thick false lashes that were part of your feminity face-off with the Evil Queen. The eyes are the window to the soul, after all. Nothing wrong with giving them some flattering window dressing."

"As opposed to looking like someone tricked you into using binoculars rimmed with charcoal? And I was not having a 'femininity face-off' with Regina," Emma rolled her eyes. Well, maybe she was. A feminine _power_ face-off. And Regina did have intimidating tits and perfectly quaffed and manicured everything that she'd tried to emulate in her own style to show that she wasn't any ugly duckling anymore, she was a tough-ass swan. But she wasn't going to give Hook any credit there.

"Agree to disagree," retorted Hook while finishing his sniffing of different bottles. "You might consider your old lashes as well, Swan. A far better frame than those... how did Anna describe the? _Nerdy_ spectacles, which I assume you're still attached to the way you're squinting at those book spines."

Emma stepped back from the book shelf of nautical-themed tones and responded, "I'm squinting because it's dark in here. And I like my glasses. You try wearing contacts when the wind chill is twenty-five bellow. I'm lucky I didn't freeze my eyeballs that first winter in town and it was unusually mild. I'm perfectly fine keeping my soul windows behind plastic and anyone who thinks looking 'nerdy' isn't befitting of being a princess can suck it."

"I believe the point," said Hook, "is that any available princess are less likely to suck anything of yours if you look like Granny's accountant."

"I have yet to meet a prince who isn't a doofus or a chauvinist prick," Emma stated, "so I'm perfectly fine with that."

Hook let out a suffering sigh and sloshed a bottle's contents, telling her, "At least burn that coat. It makes you look like a very large, mangy rat. Present from your mother?"

Emma glared, admitting an annoyed, "Christmas present. There's a blizzard. It's warm."

"If you say so," shrugged Hook before taking a swallow. "But I'm telling you, Swan. flannel and spectacles are not what you'd call pleasing to the eye. But then, perhaps your sister is right that they're your ugly disguise because you've spent your life hiding, whether behind some specs and leather or in tight dresses and curls to impress criminals and large-breasted evil queens."

"Thank you for your pop psychoanalysis and beauty tips. I'm sure there's nothing to read into your leather, lace, and _eyeliner_ fetish," snorted Emma, moving to a window to look out at the now dark sky and continually drifting and now eerily illuminated dust-motes. "How long does this shit usually last?"

"A few hours? Time moves differently here. Hard to say. Rum?" Hook offered.

"I'd rather drink antifreeze," Emma retorted, amending, "Thanks for getting my sister addicted to that shit, by the way, and turning her into an even less functional alcoholic than you."

"Perhaps you should have tried your subliminal influence with something more palatable than water to cure the _habit_." He downed a gulp. "Lasted about a week."

"Longer than my delusion that you might have actually had a selfless thought," snorted Emma.

Hook groaned, took another swallow of rum, and demanded, "What are youeven doing here, Swan? I thought you had some blizzard to contend with? You obviously have no inclination to _parlay_ with me..." he concluded, putting a leering influence on the term.

"Is that how you asked Blackbeard for your ship back?" Emma quipped. "Did he jab you in your pirate booty with his sword?"

Hook glared. Emma answered, "I told you, it wasn't intentional. There's a storm shelter at the Town Hall. My mother's been trying to contact my sister, apparently using that powder shit in her eyedrops, and my father handed out our bags of supplies. Which is really ruining my plans to have dreams that don't include you raping me in what looks a lot like your fat drunk Wish Realm self's rape tower from that most fucked up paradoxes that almost destroyed existence blooper reel the gods had."

Hook let out a sigh, answering, "Seems some kind of unconscious holdover that has, rather annoyingly, replaced both my ship and that beanstalk since the whole near-ending of the worlds thing. It's getting rather monotonous, really. Far less comfortable than my ship, far less adventurous than a giant's castle. Some echo of that bygone realm, I suppose, that will hopefully fade with time.

"And my Wish Realm self was _not_ fat," he concluded.

"Please, you saw the whole stupid mess with him using your blood to get young and try to get my ass - which was really my sister's ass until he found out she was knocked up and grew a conscience for the first time," Emma reminded, arms crossed and adding, "which I'd have appreciated a lot more if you getting my sister pregnant wasn't what lead to me ultimately dying and my son ultimately dying after having you for a stepfather seemingly turning his mother into a slutty doormat obsessed with replacing him with a new baby caused him to run away and grow up and then discovering he was being replaced embark on a stupid quest that turned him into an unbelieving shitty writer and Uber-knock-off driver caught up in a memory-spell love triangle with his inter-dimensional cousin and your double's rapist's daughter while his own grandfather was more concerned with your double and his rape baby and dying to be with his dead wife than him and instead of having his presumed birth mother's help, he got the green bitch who murdered his father as backup."

"That's hardly fair," Hook objected. "That's all unwritten now. And it was all poorly written in the first place because of the overtaxed magic and paradoxes-"

"That _you_ helped create!"

"That _Zelena_ created," Hook insisted, "and would have done whether or not your sister and I took the plunge down her time portal with her. She just used us to do as little work as required herself to change things so that she'd get some version of the happy ending she felt she deserved. Which was also undone by the gods. Can't you at least take some satisfaction out of the whiny nutter being reduced to a magicless, childless spinster?"

"She killed two innocent men, took two children's fathers away from them," Emma stated. Neal's return hardly excused her of that.

"Robin Hood was hardly innocent," Hook rolled his eyes. "He knew who and what Regina was and chose to lay down in that viper's nest even while his supposed wife was dying. He strayed from those vows on the grounds of the passage of time, believing her dead, had chilled his heart to her affection. Then confabulated some vow to Zelena due to her conceiving his child by her deception. The man was hardly as honorable as he liked to believe."

"Seems to be a common theme around here," snorted Emma.

"Aye, well, we weren't all raised with your adoptive world's values, Swan," Hook reminded, falling into a chair by a candelabra that dripped wax onto his sleeve, causing him to jump back to his feet and glare and curse, "I hate these bloody things. I actually have nightmares about the ones Belle infested my ship with coming to life and singing the songs from that damn movie. It's excruciating!"

"Sounds far more entertaining than this dream."

"Oh, sure, until they set everything on fire so you'd also burn to death in this bloody tower," he argued before going back to the original topic.

"We can't be held responsible for things we don't remember happening that technically now have not happened, Swan," he griped. "It's no different than Belle and her candelabras. Am I still miffed that she super-glued the damn things all over my ship, ruining some very expensive antique furniture and pieces of certain sentimental value? Of course. But she was out of her bloody mind at the time, having conversations with the things when not skipping off to the convent to shake babies."

"Which you'd think witnessing would have made you question her mental state and tell someone!" Emma huffed.

"First of all," Hook defended, "I never saw her shake any babies. That was the dreamcatcher captured memory of the convent cat when we were investigating her psychotic Lacy break. And the rest of it-why? Being the Dark One involved having conversations with people not there. I spent centuries with a crew of dimwits and often had to pass the time by having conversations with myself on my plans to sort them all out. Belle's a brainy recluse with no friends. Seemed sensible that she'd just use candlesticks as stand-ins for other intelligent people, what with Storybrooke seeming to have a severe lack of the actual thing. She was a weird, introvert sort who spent years in a tower. Who was I to question that when she agreed to clean my ship in return for room and board?"

"You really are a prick, Hook," snorted Emma. "I'm sorry if I'm not quite so objective about how my family and friends aided in bringing about my death so my curse-broken twin could live my life that everyone thought in the best of all possible happy endings included me turning into an alcoholic insomniac with no individual interests or ambitions beyond being your dick holster and parasite incubator - and by parasite incubator I mean both the syphilis and the kid you could have unleashed on the world. I don't care if you and Anna going back in time with Zelena tainted magic with spiteful, myopic, assholery. I still get to be mad at everyone for giving in to the worst parts of themselves while acting like their shit smelled like those creepy Middlemists. And I definitely get to be mad at you for thinking true love could come from the sick, perverted way you attempted to seduce me."

Hook rolled his eyes. "Your sister believed it! Why should I have questioned a child born of true love? Or that I thought was born of true love? How was I _or anyone_ to know about the whole Evil Twin thing?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe if you hadn't murdered my grandfather so he could have lived to tell the tale of how his bloodline got cursed?" Emma glared. "And then I wouldn't have to endure unintended dream detours into your perverted self _raping me_ on the ugliest couch I have ever seen."

"It's the couch my mother used to lounge on while telling my brother and I stories - and upon which I found her dead from consumption," Hook shrugged. "Something else I am working through."

Emma blinked at the pirate as he downed more rum and shook her head. "Wow, you really do have issues, Hook. Sick, demented issues that require a lot more than mucking around in your head. Speaking of which, if this is your dream, shouldn't _your dream self be here doing the raping instead_?"

"I knocked him out, tied him up, and locked him in the wardrobe of course," shrugged Hook. "And there's no reason your evening can't still be worthwhile even if this detour into the realm of dreams was unintentional," he amended, sidling over to Emma. "What happens in the Dream Realm stays in the Dream Realm, I always say. So perhaps I can offer a more pleasurable alternative than drooling on your pillow and dreaming of whatever boring, prudish things I can only imagine fill your nights, Swan," he concluded with a leer.

Emma lifted a brow, smiled slightly, then kneed him in the groin.

Hook gasped and crumbled to the floor. "Damn it, Swan! I don't even have the protection of my leathers! And I've spilled my rum!"

"I still found it pleasurable," Emma retorted with a smirk and looked for the most uncomfortable surface - least likely to have been involved in sexual activities - in the tower room. "If you get kicked in the nuts in your dream, do you pee blood when you wake up?"

"Probably! And it was a bloody joke!" Hook wheezed, his voice still a few octaves too high.

"Yeah, well, I don't share my sister's sexual-assault-based sense of humor," she shrugged, settling for a wooden chair at a table full of melting candles.

"It's called 'charm'," Hook defended as he stood back up. "And I take considerable issue with your accusations and inferences about my past dalliances in this reality or any other."

"Yeah, well considering you probably spent most of your life as drunk as the women you got Smee to carry to your quarters and half the population of The Enchanted has probably been sex catfished with magic, I'm not surprised," Emma scoffed. "I'm actually surprised you can even get it up given how old you are and with all those STDs."

Scowling, Hook sat across from her before demanding to know, "Why are you such a salty bitch, Swan?"

"Why are you such a misogynist prick, Hook?" Emma retorted.

"Again," huffed Hook, "I take issue with your description of my character. I am a gentleman pirate. My revenge issues notwithstanding, I am a great lover of women - both literally and figuratively," he concluded, again with a leer that drew an eye-roll from Emma.

"See? That right there. The unwelcome 'flirting'? That leer says 'sexist pig', not 'feminist with a dick'," Emma countered, elbows resting on the tabletop. "It's the banner you've been waving since I pulled you out from under the pile of dead people you helped get murdered and tied you to that tree. And that beanstalk thing you consider a romantic adventure? Where was the romance in that, when my mother and I were deciding who should go up the beanstalk and you wanted us to have a catfight for you?"

Hook rolled his eyes again and insisted, "I was trying to rile you up. And there was romance atop the beanstalk."

"Right, for the wound you bandaged before I could do it myself because you wanted an excuse to get your rum-stinking mouth close to my hand so you could pretend like that was some chivalrous wrist-kissing bullshit," Emma countered. "Maybe that flies in your world, but in mine, you ask a woman before you touch her. That's not chivalrous, it's invasive and creepy. And it's extra creepy when it comes after dropping lines about orphans like you were some hero instead of a dipshit who handed kids over to Pan so he could turn them into his sad-eyed, fucked-up Lost Boys - and that's even without factoring in that one of those kids was my kid's father and your stepson."

"I apologized for that," Hook insisted, sipping his remaining rum with less gusto.

"No, you didn't," Emma objected. "Neal told me what you said, and the only thing you apologized for was a bullshit pussy-grabbing competition that he was never part of, not the hundreds of years being a child-abuse-enabling scumbag."

After a pause, Emma continued, "And speaking of your Neverland, pussy-grabbing-related crap-" She picked up a dusty knife from the table and holding it in a candle flame, "how about when you 'thanked' Neal for being so understanding about your 'dalliance' with me that you A) insinuated was sexual intercourse to make him jealous and demonstrate your dick size and B) was your way of staking a claim to me, which is gross by itself even without adding in that you knew we weren't together because you eavesdropped on us and I'd just thought he was dead? Was that what you call the 'good form' of a gentleman, Hook? Like when you tried to exploit Tink for sex and, when she turned you down, you publicly claimed that something had happened between you to attempt to make me jealous? Or when you pretended to 'let' Neal have a shot at me, but really you were intentionally shoving at me knowing that him acting like you, like an over-entitled asshole, would get him shot down?

"How does 'I'm sorry for letting a woman come between us' actually apologize for any of that," Emma accused, "especially when I was never between either of you, I was just trying to save my son - that you pretended to go after as penance for selling out his father but it was really as you told my father, to get in my pants! So, not only did you treat my wishes as immaterial, and my son as a pawn, you treated Neal - your previous pawn - as having a _right_ to me just because we had a past and both had said we still loved each other _and_ you took pleasure in my father owing you whatever you wanted - that being his daughter, like I was his to give."

"I was trying to rile your father up," Hook argued. "No father likes the idea, at the outset anyway, of his princess being courted by a pirate."

"You were trying to rile him up _when he was dying_?" Emma scoffed. "More stress, yeah, that's what he needed. You didn't give a shit about his health, at least you were honest about that. And I guess my father is either a better person to forgive you for all the ways in which you've wronged him if you make my sister happy than I am, or he's just got as much concussion damage as my mother. But I don't forgive any of that."

"I already was under that assumption, Swan," sighed Hook. "No need to beat that dead horse until it's glue."

Narrowing her eyes, Emma continued, "Fine, then, not me. How about all the times you repeatedly used Belle as an object to hurt Gold by both physical assault and blackmail? When you stood by ogling her tits while Regina was being tortured? Or that you assaulted Zelena when she was pregnant? Which is fucked up even if they're both murderers and rapists too, because you did it _because they're women and it gets you hard_. Throw in when you sexually assaulted me in New York to try and jog my memory with mutual true love, and you've clearly got a problem with physical violence against women that you write off as either excused by revenge against their man or necessary because you know better what they need than they do. I don't know what excuse Archie made to not flag you as a misogynist asshole perpetrating an emotionally controlling relationship, but I didn't laugh when you doubled down on the gross factor by making jokes about my pregnant mother being demanding!" she scoffed, picking at her nails with the knife.

"Which was obviously in jest," Hook scoffed. "It amazes me that your parents even figured out how to conceive you, they're so bloody prudish. You take after them, I suppose, outside of your _job required_ seductions. A perk of your sister's existence spawning from a blood curse that she's not similarly afflicted."

Emma snorted. "Please, we both know that Anna's tastes are actually tame compared to what you've done and have convinced her to try to make you happy. It was the Dark One, Nimue in particular, that was into the kinky shit and she's just clinging to the memories of that demon's desires to keep her hubby happy when she actually wants the pearls and picket fences and pretending that she's being the rebellious and free-spirited one by marrying a pirate. Maybe she is. But it's not three-ways and ass-play. I'm sure giving that up, along with the big-titted barmaids irks you. But you get being married to a princess in return for enduring missionary sex when it's not your birthday or Valentine's Day. Speaking of which, this is a very romantic way to spend that holiday with your wife's sister, Hook."

"That holiday only exists in your world, Swan," Hook waved her off.

"Yeah, well, Anna grew up in that world with me and she's gonna be pissed if you've forgotten. I think the holiday is commercialist crap to sell candy and flowers and trade them for blowjobs, but Anna's a romantic," Emma reminded. "One who was probably willing to slut it up for you outside of her comfort zone if you'd given her one of those pink rape roses."

Hook just glowered at her while Emma continued, "But, now that I think about it, my sister technically isn't a princess, is she? Not a legal one, anyway. You'll never be her prince consort. You really did get a raw deal, didn't you? Not what you were stalking, anyway. You can be a hero and fleet admiral of my parents' nonexistent navy, but you'll never be a sex prince."

"If you think that's really what I care about, Swan," growled Hook, "then you don't know me nearly as well as you think. Wading around in your sister's unconscious for a few years hardly gave you as much insight as you think you have."

Shrugging, Emma retorted, "Fine, then, you don't care about titles. Just being the center of attention and getting laid. I don't need Anna's perspective to know you have zero empathy and remorse. And certainly zero respect for women. Maybe you think you do, but you don't understand any of those things.

"You are literally a 'bros before hoes' fuckboy," she told him with a dark smirk, "who wants to be the big strong man and keep women in their place. You told my sister _that you thought was me_ that her 'discomfort was a cross' you would bear because you liked how her tits looked in a corset and that her being competent and saving herself was 'depriving' you of a dashing rescue. You literally said that getting women drunk was your 'usual tactic' in what you thought was a sexual assignation. And on your first date with Anna you told her 'You know how to chase a monster; I know how to plan an evening out,' insulting her social skills and reducing her to a purpose, something you knew _I_ was sensitive about while then pouting like a deprived pervert when she kept turning down your leering attempts to get her drunk that you didn't even _pretend_ weren't intended to get her to sleep with you... or maybe you thought you did and have no idea that constant lascivious sneer you pour on like you think it's charming is actually screaming 'I'm a sexist pig whose only true desire in life is to either fuck you or fuck you over'."

Scowl deepening, Hook defended, "I spent a great deal of my life as a pirate, Swan, and that suitably defines that lifestyle. One cannot expect me to instantly change into a neutered house husband like your father."

Emma refused to let herself snort at that despite _slightly_ agreeing that her father was a _bit_ overly submissive to her mother's whims. 'House husband' wasn't really a good description, because she thought it was great that they shared domestic tasks. It was mostly the always giving into her mother's idiotic plans instead of standing up for his own possibly less idiotic ones.

Emma pointed the soot-stained knife at Hook and returned, "And you bought your girlfriend of three months a house, picked it out without ever asking if she wanted to move in or giving her a say in where she would be living for years - obviously because it was your tactic for getting your woman to commit to your level of codependency. What's even worse, though, is dragging Henry into it. Manipulating him when he thought his mother was the Dark One _and_ that you put more stock in the thoughts of a male child than in a the grown-ass woman you claimed to love.

"But oh," Emma snorted, "when things weren't going your way, you told her that you liked her better when she was damaged and wanted to make her hurt like she hurt you. Just like that whole bullshit with saying you were glad my heart was broken - because that meant you could get your syphilitic hands all over it. And _again_ you used Henry, impersonating him. And you used suicide to get attention. Not to mention you've literally said that women are objects that can be traded back and forth between men, and literally called a woman dirty for having sex; yeah, Milah was a horrible person, but saying you 'sent her back soiled' doesn't say a lot for how you value women even without all the raping shit."

"That's hearsay, Swan," scoffed Hook. "Are you really going to believe anything the Crocodile says?"

Emma rolled her eyes at Hook's nickname. It was so childish. He was just as horrible a person as Rumplestiltskin, if not worse in respect to his treatment of women and children, and had lived just as long, but Gold didn't go around calling _him_ by some petty taunt for "soiling" his wife. Rumplestiltskin was not a pleasant person in Emma's book, and the guy had a lot to redeem himself for, but at least he behaved like a grown-up 99% of the time and that 1% of childishness was reserved for smashing things with his cane when he got angry.

Hook was a manchild 100% of the time, unable to curb petty insults or adolescent expressions when allowed to join in conversations and adventures with grown-ups. Anna wasn't much better, honestly, whatever maturity Emma had managed to invoke gradually fading away, those layers of experience-gained wisdom and how to behave as an adult peeled away by her curse, her lack of direct life experience, and the influence of her utterly immature lover. They were like a high school jock and spoiled rich girl bullies trapped in the bodies of adults... despite Emma being fairly confident that Hook had zero athletic skills and Anna had always been as dirt poor and neglected as Emma... until she curse-acquired an affluent house and got pampered by their parents.

Sighing, Emma finally answered, "No but I am going to believe the camera that Belle had my sister put on your ship to warn her if Gold was snooping around." Arms crossed she continued, "You think a woman betraying her marriage vows makes her unclean, but you make it your mission to seduce women into straying into your bed. Your entire romantic philosophy is based on degrading women, Hook. Or just your life philosophy in general. Getting drunk and making insulting generalizations about women on a regular basis." She buried the tip of the knife in the tabletop. "And you really think you're some kind of gift to womankind. You're delusional."

"I value women," Hook argued. "And I saved many a woman from an unhappy state, even if just for a night. Just because I come from a time with expressions of that which you don't understand does not mean I am not a defender of female empowerment, Swan."

"If that's defined by a consistent pattern of insulting and disrespecting women just because they are women, then sure," Emma scoffed. "I've meet plenty of men from fairy tale worlds and a few from 'your time', which includes a much more competent Dark One than you, who never treated women in such a degrading, objectifying manner. So when you've got twenty-some examples of a man talking women down, acting like they're objects to be traded between men, using them for sex, and making rape jokes and sexual assaults, and you're the only one doing that? _That is context_.

"And even if the universe that spawned this nightmare doesn't exist anymore," Emma stated emphatically, "I'm still gonna count telling your little pregnant wifey to 'rest' as if she can't figure out what her own body needs. You may call that love, but I call it the dominating side of a creepy codependent obsession. I makes me angry and sad what you've done to my sister. She could have fought her curse. I would have helped her. But the only thing she wanted help with was making you pancakes because the only thing you wanted her to be was your perfect little trophy wife, which being a dipshit yourself, doesn't require being a good person, a loving mother and daughter, or a competent police officer. You encouraged her, by words or by example, to slack off of everything that she got from me, that she could have fought to keep, to try to be what she could be without that curse instead of defined by it."

Shaking her head, Emma concluded, "That's what I hate about you most, Hook. You seduced Anna into being your conscience, into being a reason to get back to whatever delusion you have that you ever were a good person, and the price was she had to give up the goodness in her heart that being part of me protected for our entire lives until you came into them. Maybe she lightened your heart, but she darkened hers in the process. And if you really loved her, you'd let her go, free her from the needy, controlling, weak-willed piece of shit you are so she could figure out for the first time in her life who she is, because no woman should reduce her identity to some guy's fangirl. Anna might not be a savior or a princess, but she should be more than just a pirate's wife. Particularly to a pirate who's the human equivalent of a lampshade in a whorehouse covered in three centuries of diseased jizz."

" _Lovely_."

Hook sat back in his chair, tipping it to rest his sock-clad feet on the table. "The heart knows beyond magic, even curses, Swan," he defended. "I'd think the 'true love' child of Snow White and Prince Charming would know that. But I suppose you're still as bitchy about that as you were in Neverland. It's no wonder your parents had to 'accidentally' slip you some dream dust to get you to try sleep-chatting with your sister. Or maybe it was just to try to work out all your issues. A pity you ended up spoiling my dream instead.

"But I'll tell Anna that you send your love."

Standing up, he gave her a dismissive wave, "You've out-warn your welcome, Swan. What is it that Zelena likes to say? 'Bye, Felicity'?"

Snorting, Emma retorted, "Bye, Felicia." She stood up as well. "Fine, go back to banging your Emma sex doll on your dead mother's couch, Hook. I'd rather spend the rest of this nightmare sitting on a pile of moldy leaves and pine needles than continuing this conversation."

Getting up herself, Emma headed back toward the window to endure a climb down the rope and vines. But as she reached it, a _dragon_ swooped into view, barreling right toward the tower. Reversing course, Emma threw herself toward Hook.

Of course, he gave her a surprised and leering, "Had a change of he-"

But was cut off by a screeching roar before a blast of fire shot through the window, setting both the bed and couch on fire, and just missing them as they tumbled into the locked door of the wardrobe.

"Hook, why is there a dragon in your depraved sex dream?" Emma demanded.

Said dragon bashed its snout through the roof, shattering wood beams and masonry.

"How the hell should I know?" Hook snapped.

"Well, unless we wake up in the next few seconds we need to find a way out of here! I'm pretty sure dying in this place is not a good thing!"

"Aye, I'd rather avoid finding out how angry the Netherworld wraiths are at having lost Prince Philip's tasty soul," Hook agreed with a grimace in the direction of the window that was now occupied by a large pair of dragon balls, the stabbing of which would likely not aid in their escape. "But the bloody thing is a copy of that alternate reality witch's tower. Being a witch, she didn't require stairs. You're the one with magic, Swan!"

"Not in _your_ dream, Hook! Imagine up some stairs before this becomes the burning red room!"

The pirate didn't seem impressed with that logic, but shut his eyes and presumably thought hard on the image of stairs while the dragon got its head in enough to start munching on the fake Emma in gory gustatory satisfaction.

"HOOK!"

"I'M TRYING!"

Finally, the floor in the middle of the tower rippled and an opening with a spiral staircase appeared. They wasted no time in sprinting down them... a good thing as the stairs began to disappear as they went, almost catching up with them before Hook was able to image a door to keep them from being merged with granite blocks.

Outside they continued to run, seeking cover in the thick undergrowth of the surrounding forest. Once they had made it a good distance into the woods, Hook remarked, "You smell like a burnt squirrel, Swan. So I stand corrected on the 'rat' remark. Your mother must have been cheated by a cheap coat-maker. Or she just lied and got you a cheap coat. But that's definitely the scent of crispy squirrel. Had to eat an unfortunate lot of those as a land pirate."

"As opposed to the lot of rats you ate as a sea pirate?" Emma quipped.

"That was only a _few_ times in Neverland," Hook insisted, "when Pan had the mermaids chase the fish away and Tiger Lily was hiding all the wild boar, such as during that unfortunate adventure to rescue your boy during which that two-faced fairy did nothing to help us, let me remind you."

The dragon roared in the distance and he accused, "This is all _your_ fault, you know. Clearly, your presence has buggered up my unconscious, Swan."

"More than it already is, you mean."

"And I do have regrets, as a matter of fact," Hook told her. "I regret that I ever thought your acrimonious personality and insults were covering for some inner pain or a clever way of flirting intending to play hard to get. Your inner femininity is just as intolerably bitchy as the outside."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't meant as one."

"Then you know how I feel since you twist every criticism into a misunderstanding of your victimhood, Hook. The only thing you're a victim of is whoever told you that sexy pirates wear eyeliner and that women love the smell of rum and sweaty leather."

"The ones worth associating with do."

"Again. Compliment," smirked Emma, "and no woman worth associating with plays hard to get. And the ones that do aren't interested in a romantic outcome," she concluded as a small white bunny rabbit hopped out from under some ferns.

"No," Hook gulped and backed away, going pale.

"You're afraid of bunny rabbits?" Emma asked, bemused. "It's just a harmless rabbit, Hook."

"That's no harmless anything!" he hissed, backing away further. "It's a _monster_."

Before Emma could laugh that comment off, the bunny's eyes suddenly glowed red and it sprouted long, _bloody_ fangs.

"Run away!" Hook squeaked out.

Emma did not object this time as the rabbit launched itself from the ground and literally _flew_ toward them by the unnatural magic of an impressively copied nightmare version of a cheap movie trick. One she now remembered Hook complaining after Henry made him watch _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ had given him nightmares.

Of course, the monster chased them right back to the clearing where the dragon was now pulling out the no-longer-tied-up Dream Hook's entrails from the half it hadn't yet eaten.

It noticed them immediately, turning its own bloody grin toward them, but Emma ran toward it undeterred.

"SWAN, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?" Hook hollered as she ran full-tilt into the clearing.

"JUST KEEP RUNNING!"

The dragon seemed baffled why they were running right toward it as well. But being a dragon, it wasn't remotely distressed and opened its large jaws to either roast them or devour them. At which point Emma dropped to the ground, leg out to trip the bewildered pirate who'd stupidly gone along with her.

Hook hit the dirt, but the bunny kept flying - right into the dragon's mouth as it was inhaling to let lose a breath of fire. Instead it wheezed and toppled over dead and then vanished in puff of silvery mist.

Emma stood up and brushed off her slacks.. "You're welcome."

"How'd you know that would work?" Hook asked and she shrugged.

"You're gullible, Hook. Stands to reason that the unconscious manifestations of your fears are too," she retorted and then snorted. "I get the dragon. Everyone's afraid of them. But you _still_ have nightmares about the Monty Python bunny? _Seriously_?"

"Shuddup."

Rolling her eyes, Emma found a large granite block to sit on by some smoldering roof beams. "You really are a childish asshole."

"Aye, so you've made repeatedly clear," sighed Hook as he searched through the rubble for his clothes. "But arsehole or not, I'm the man your sister chose to marry, Swan. Means you've got to put up with me in your life. And apparently I have to put up with you until this bloody powder wears off!"

"How awful for you," Emma shot back. "And you only have to up with me until Anna realizes her horrible mistake, dumps your ass, and is secure enough in her own self-worth to not need a man. That's the only way she'll ever be happy, whether that's on her own, or being emotionally mature enough to find someone who is also emotionally mature enough to be in a relationship _and_ not an asshole.

"Cursed or not, Anna deserves a partner who isn't a killer and a rapist," she continued, "who didn't murder not only his own father for spite, but killed _our grandfather_ just for kicks. That's not okay, Hook. And my father either has as much brain damage as my mother or is seriously repressed about being okay with that for what he thought was my sake, because no one's reaction to that was normal. And I'm apparently still waiting for the hangover from Zelena's dark magic to wear off, when they'll hopefully get their heads out of their asses and realize that you and a number of other people they've called reformed heroes whose pasts don't matter should be rotting in prison."

"Won't happen, Swan," Hook shook his head, side-stepping his dream self's severed head. "An inaccurate definition of justice is the social foundation of The Enchanted Forest and its sibling realms. Hundreds of years of history, of politics, economics, and romance have been based upon an absurdly easy shrugging off of criminal atrocities by those who consider themselves virtuous. Why do you think the 'villains' who often start out as the wronged parties take revenge to such extremes? The 'heroes' just don't take them seriously, think we should get over it, shrug it off, stiff upper lip and all that. And if _their_ crimes are never exposed, they get to go on being beloved by everyone while never lifting a finger to right any of their wrongs.

"Do you think Cora would have turned into the Queen of Hearts if Leopold had thrown Eva in the dungeon after discovering her duplicity and apologized for trusting that scheming princess over his fiancée?" he challenged. "Or if Eva had come forward to publicly expose her own villainous youth to the people of her kingdom, proclaiming that Cora was the rightful queen and giving her family a more powerful role in her kingdom to atone for that than the pitiful farm King Xavier gave his last-born son?"

After a pause, Hook continued, "And Fiona. Would she have created the Dark Curse and damned generations to a timetable of its casting if the Blue Fairy had just listened to her and taken her fears seriously instead of telling her to shut it and let destiny happen because it's more important than her feelings? Then her husband wouldn't have turned into Pan, Neverland would not have been opened to mortals, and I'd have died a long time ago, sparing you my presence. Of course, so would Henry's father. But then, thinking on it, you might never have been born because you wouldn't be needed as a savior so your family's blood curse would have caused your twin sister to kill you in the womb."

Hook shrugged and concluded, "But that's getting into depths of philosophy I've not consumed enough rum yet to tackle. My point is that the degree of anyone's villainy in worlds of so-called fairytales is as a much on the heroes as on the criminals. Perhaps that's true in your world as well-"

"Seeing as you, the law enforcement, were doing a shitty job of it?" Emma cut him off. "Yeah, that's true at least. And I never said my parents' particular application of mercy, grace, and charity never quite add up to what that goddess with the blindfold actually intended as justice before Zeus fucked it all up with crazy customs and rewarding the bad guys while punishing the good guys, but telling them that suffering was part of being good and their was a happily ever after reward... being his playthings in the Afterlife.

"What I am saying," she explained, "is that just because they're clueless about that doesn't absolve you of self-accountability, Hook. Becoming a _real_ good person, not a fake-ass definition of one created by a greedy god, means you don't take all the rewards you don't deserve served up on a silver platter just because the heroes are too morally incompetent to _not_ reward you."

"Aye, well, I'm not trying to be your definition of 'good', Swan," Hook objected, "so you'll just have to put up with the rest of your family adhering to a different set of rules that say I'm pardoned of my sins because I let love into my heart and ceased killing innocent people and so am now deserving of all the same riches as they are. Besides, by the rules of _your_ world, as I understand them from watching television, every family is required to be blessed with a roguish son-in-law that was initially loathed but charmed his way into their hearts and provides much-needed crassness and adventurous activities to their otherwise boring, monotonous lives."

"I really wish Henry had never taught you how to use the remote," Emma grumbled. "That's just a stupid TV trope, Hook! That's not what people actually want in their lives."

"Well, not you, perhaps," he shrugged, "but it's a service the others seem to appreciate that gives me added purpose beyond bedding your sister. And since Anna greatly enjoys that, despite your attempts at transferring your own rigid preferences, you're going to have to put up with me and get over our complicated history."

"It's not complicated, Hook. You left me to die. You tried to kill me. You threatened to rape me. You left me to die again. You emotionally manipulated me, lied to me, and sexually assaulted me in my own home. That's very straight forward."

"That's your point of view," he waved her off. "But I'm not looking for your forgiveness, Swan. You're entitled to your interpretation and opinion. The only opinion that truly matters is Anna's. And I'm not going to have a debate about its authenticity and the meddling of blood curses. Her opinion is her opinion until it isn't. And currently it's that I'm a changed man, changed for love, who wants to enjoy all the things in life that I squandered during my years of revenge plotting... turning that into a side hobby of mostly just annoying the Crocodile by occasionally rendering him unconscious and giving him a wedgie. There are _some_ benefits to modern underclothes..."

Emma grimaced and averted her gaze as the pirate made no move to be discrete about pulling his slightly sooty ones back on.

"I don't object to the _fasteners_ on bras. Much easier to remove than a corset, particularly one-handed," Hook concluded after straightening back up.

"Yeah, a hand you deserved to have cut off," she told him. "And any kind of revenge hobby is stupid, Hook. Milah's punishment was never to get at you. You were nothing to Rumplestiltskin. _You're still nothing_. You've confabulated this whole arch rival nonsense that's entirely one-sided and should have ended years ago, because _Milah_ made her peace. Anna even told you that."

"I get to make my own peace or not in my own time, Swan," Hook harumphed, pulling on his leather pants. "Just like you."

"And in your case that's never because it suits your ego. You could have cared less about Milah's fate," she reminded. "Yet you still blathered on about revenge for Milah when you tried to kill Gold before your wedding. Milah who _used_ you. Milah who was _disgusted_ that you followed her lead in betraying her son and then _went after his lover for your own_. She sure as shit doesn't want you taking revenge in her name anymore, Hook, and you know that's been lip-service for centuries.

"My guess," she considered, "is that it was from the start, that it's always been about you and your hand and your pride, just like her 'love' for you was all sticking it to her ex and the patriarchy and using you as a means to look badass without making the real effort to earn all that fear-mongering herself. She used your reputation to build hers. And you used her name as a means to sound like you had some righteous reason to plot and hurt innocent people and being a mopey little wounded shit who wasn't to blame for his actions because he was just so sad and traumatized by losing his true love.

"Milah was no wronged 'damsel in distress' seeking sanctuary on your ship and you were no romantic 'gentleman pirate' for spiriting her away from her family. Your epic romance was just a cold-hearted bitch and a heartless prick who used each other.

"And from my point of view," Emma continued, "it's not much different with you and my sister. Or maybe worse, with your codependency compounded by your counteractive narcissism that was maybe always there, but back then got satisfied by your bootlicking crew. But since Smee got them all to desert your service, now all you've got is using lies and manipulation to con my family into becoming your crew of sycophants who kiss your ass just for wiping it after you take a dump."

"Well, you try wiping _your_ arse one-handed on a stormy sea. That should warrant extra recognition," quipped Hook after pulling on his boots. "And as I said before, you can't blame _me_ for your parents succumbing to my charms, Swan. Pirate being a pirate? Just be grateful you ended up with a mix of Queen Eva's cunning and wit without her cruelty and Ruth Nolan's tolerance and compassion without the complacency or you'd have to throw yourself in a dungeon. Perhaps that savior magic made sure you got a better mixing of your gene pool than your parents, weeding out all the bad you'd share with Anna otherwise."

Emma snorted. "You're actually trying to give me a compliment, Hook?"

"Might be a modified version of something I told Anna," he shrugged. "But taking advantage of anyone's gullibility when I was a cold-blooded pirate is not my fault in any sort of intentionally malicious way. So be angry with me for any slights I made directly against you or your son. But don't hold me accountable for decisions your family and friends have made about me and what they thought was you. Blame them for that."

Scowling, Emma sat back and retorted, "I _do_ blame _them_. I don't know how _not_ to."

"Well, I can't give you much advice there. I didn't know how not to blame my father, so I killed him and I still loath the Crocodile, as you know."

"And it's entirely within my right to be pissed as hell at you for all your shady little manipulations that took advantage of the goodness of others, Hook," Emma argued, "pirate or not, particularly after your time travel adventure made everyone especially susceptible to whatever selfish shit you, Anna, and Zelena pulled as the magical architects of the destruction of my parents' meeting that spiraled into a toxic waste dump of paradoxes that ended reality and you, under the banner of a good guy, just shrugged off that everyone suddenly changed personalities and kissed your ass."

"I told you, not my brand of morality. Or theirs. Just be glad we're back in a more sensible universe than the one those goddesses decided to end in a controlled near-destruction of reality by utilizing less paradoxically damaging immortal time travel or some such shite that would have been more amusing if it involved that phonebox from The Underworld."

"Your love of _Doctor Who_ is one more reason I can't stand you," Emma scoffed. "That show is stupid. A bunch of generally old British dudes traveling through time with 'companions', fighting glorified Roombas."

"Aye, well, those bloody goddesses ruined it for me by spoiling the next one's going to be a woman," grumbled Hook. "Probably will end up being a lesbian besides, but not in the good way of those late night telly stations that involves pizza delivery and that infernal glowing machine from the Station that eats paper and spits completely non-magical ink or even the occasionally entertaining way of Ruby and Dorothy having hot make-out sessions, but in the boring honorable, might-as-well-be-asexual way like Mulan."

"Better asexual and honorable than everything you are," Emma snorted. "And you seemed rather fond of that copy machine when you tried to change the toner and ended up getting stoned. A pity the security camera couldn't capture you jabbing the paper tray with your sword."

"Shuddup! How was I to know that stuff is like milk of the poppy!?"

"For the love of... would all you idiots stop calling it that! It's _opium_!" Emma growled, amending, "I don't know how many times I had to restrain myself from punching Mulan in the face for saying 'milk of the poppy' this and 'milk of the poppy' that."

"Perhaps she compensated for her lack of sexual gratification with _milk of the poppy_ ," Hook retorted, "and her honor was all lies. All I know is, I'm intrigued that your mum nearly stabbed her to death and think it rather a pity Snow White lost that vicious protective streak. It would have made courting your sister much more enjoyable if either of your parents had put up a fight."

"Thank your magic wormhole that transformed my mother's 'protective streak' into offering to kill herself and her husband so my dumbass sister could get you back a day sooner than you would have gotten back otherwise completely on your own since you were in no actual danger from the Black Fairy's magical displacement, but she obviously knew my sister was _my sister_ and thus a hotheaded, completely unreasonable and violently codependent slut for you."

"I'm sure Anna will enjoy my recounting your praises of her character, Swan," Hook scoffed while setting the blood-spattered couch upright and taking a seat on the least bloody part of it.

"I'm sure Anna knows exactly how I feel about her and the version of that curse warps her into and that you enabled even before she was free of my _good_ influence. From the forced kisses, to forcing yourself on her whenever she wanted to be alone, to brainwashing her into not wanting to know about your past. It's all the bad shit you did to her that made her the kind of person who'd keep shit from you, who'd turn you into the Dark One, not her being the Dark One or an 'Evil Twin'. She had just enough sense to realize it wasn't right to still be with you after finding out that you killed our grandfather, that it really wasn't right for the lie to feel worse than the actual taking of a life. But you didn't have the strength or the goodness to say 'yeah, you're right, I'm an asshole who's taking emotional advantage of you, turning you into someone the you I first met would hate, so here's where I get on a submarine and never come back, no matter what saccharine shit your massively-concussed mother tells me just so she can cure her own guilt over being a shitty mother by planning a wedding and congratulating herself that she got her kid a true love match that will mean a blissful future to make up for the miserable past. _That_ would be what a changed man would do. By _my_ definition, of course, so feel free to keep following your screwed up one. I know you will."

Shaking her head, Emma stated, "At the end of the day, you and Anna both bring out the worst in each other. Anna's inability to admit that you're a terrible person and you thinking you can keep being this person, since she enabled it, but re-labeling it as heroic because she was me and I was supposed to be some mystical hero figure who'd purify your heart is all a bunch of codependent bullshit. It's sad and pathetic and one or both of you is going to end up hurt."

"You're just angry that _you're_ hurt, Swan," Hook argued, "and taking it out on us. I _am_ sorry that you're alone, _Emma_ ," he insisted, almost sounding genuine. "I'm sure you'd be far less of a judgmental bitch if you had Baelfire to warm your bed at night-"

"Yeah, it always comes down to sex," Emma cut him off.

Hook rolled his eyes. "It does, actually. And I get it. Things didn't turn out ideally for either of us, not how we planned at the outset, and worse for you. I didn't get the woman I thought I was pursuing - that ideal apparently never existed but in some dream I put into my own head by going back in time and helping get myself drunk and fancying that encounter as something more meaningful than a simple con. And you didn't get the second chance you wanted, that you didn't know your sister's inclinations were keeping you from pursuing as your control began slipping away like the magnetic poles reversing, throwing your moral compass out of sorts. And now you've got to endure our happiness on top of your parents' happiness - and guilt at being partially responsible for you losing yours. I know that despair, Swan. Seeing others enjoying what was taken from you and not understanding its importance, treating your loss like something you should shrug off-"

"Because that's what the good guys do," Emma concluded for him. "I'm not defending that life's philosophy. But I'm not accepting yours either, Hook. And I'm not angry or jealous of anyone else's happiness. I just want it to be _real_ happiness instead of squandering their time on delusions. I want Anna to be able to know what true love and real happiness feel like."

"She's cursed, Swan," Hook sighed. "Unless that curse is broken, she can't."

"And I thought that's why you left. Part of the reason, anyway."

"Not every quest is successful," he shrugged.

"So much for sowing your oats - aside from all the barmaids you raped and impregnated over the past three centuries, of course," Emma retorted. "Maybe you have a great great grandson young enough that you can teach how to cheat at dice and stab in the back. Even bump off his father and grandfather so you can adopt him, and if he gives you any sass, you can just toss him through a portal into another realm run by a demon or something. Seems legit by your family standards."

"Sure, I'll consider it," Hook snarked right back as he located a flask in the rubble and after taking a swig from it, he pointed out, "Your squirrel coat is still smoldering, Swan."

Emma turned her head and realized that there was, indeed, smoke once again coming from the back of her coat and her back was starting to get rather warm. Swearing, she finally pulled off the coat, tossing it on the ground and stomping out the beginning of flames.

Hook choked on his rum and sputtered in shocked observation, "You're pregnant."

Sighing over the subject matter she'd hoped to continue concealing, Emma retorted, "Apparently I'm not as prudish or lonely as you think. And just have shitty luck when I'm opting for the less prudish and lonely. And no, I don't want to talk about it any further than that. I still have to break the 'you have another illegitimate grandchild' news to my mother in the middle of a political crisis where that's not exactly going to earn support with the traditionalists."

"Trouble still stirring in Little Camelot, eh? I may be a terrible deputy by your standards, but I _did_ warn your parents that the place was teaming with nefarious sorts and Philip and Aurora hardly seem strong or competent enough to keep them in line for long," he recalled before another drink.

"George and Tremaine or Gothel or whoever the hell Ella's step aunt is are pitting factions against each other, clearly hoping to swoop into the mess and assert control," sighed Emma. "It's one more complication that I don't need when I'm still sorting through all the lawsuits filed against the Department because of you and Anna."

"The girl with the cat?"

"Yes, the girl with the cat! And many others not involving house pets!"

"I'd take issue with your tone," Hook stated, "but clearly you're hormonal, so I'll forgive all of your earlier insults, Swan, and offer congratulations... as well as condolences for whatever political theater farce your mother is sure to foist upon you as damage control for this impending little bastard of yours. I will further preemptively opt myself and Anna out of any attempts to foist upon us babysitting services."

"I'd rather have Leroy, Walter, and that girl's traumatized cat watch any kid of mine than either of you, so don't worry. You were never on the list, Hook."

"Ah, well, good then. Perhaps Belle is available. I'm sure her medication regiment has reduced her predilection toward shaking babies. Or not."

The dust motes suddenly grew heavier and the surroundings started to grow fuzzy and dim.

"Looks like our time is about up," said Hook. "Hardly soon enough, Swan."

Frowning, Emma returned, "Tell Anna I hope... she gets back safely."

The world went black before Hook could answer.

* * *

 **AN:** I know _Westworld_ didn't exist as TV show yet. But _Hamilton_ didn't exist during OUAT's run either, and dumbass writers who don't know their own timeline put it in. Emma's listing of Hook's offenses comes from a tumblr post by violetfaust. As far as I know, there has never been a name given to Aurora or Philip's kingdom(s). I named it after Charles Perrault, who wrote a version of the fairytale. The sheriff Emma references is the now infamous Joseph Arpaio, pardoned by Trump for extreme racial profiling, who was the elected Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years, from 1993 until 2016. OUAT seems to exist in a parallel universe in which Maricopa County was run by a sheriff who was not a chain-gang-operating asshole, where prisoners did not have to wear jail-bird striped uniforms (pink and black for the ladies, y'all!), and where you got your own spit-shined cell with an actual mattress. Emma's contemplation of herself and Anna as monarchs is again inspired by _The Crown_ , Season 2 this time.


	26. The Storm Part II

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to Mir: Glad you approve. I wasn't sure people could stomach this much Hook.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX**

 **THE STORM PART II**

Emma woke disoriented, her eyes fluttering open to a dimly lit cell. The metal bars and movement in her belly left her momentarily caught in the past, fuzzy brain thinking she'd woken from a much longer and stranger dream before realizing this wasn't Phoenix and an arm not her own was wrapped around her middle beneath layers of clothes that hadn't been completely shed and/or replaced after amorous activities in the now rather chilly Sheriff's Station.

Outside the wind could still be heard blowing, but there was enough light coming through the bullpen's elevated windows to suggest the brunt of the blizzard had ended. Of course, there was still and ice storm predicted to arrive after only a brief respid, covering the snow in a hard coating of ice, bringing down trees and powerlines, and no doubt leading to traffic accidents that had nothing to do with trying to leave town.

Shifting in Neal's grip, to stretch out her arm, Emma retrieved her glasses and phone from where both had fallen to the floor beside the doubled-up cots. The latter still showed a few signal bars, but that probably wouldn't last once the ice arrived... along with the Station's recently installed wifi.

Putting her unpleasant "dream" out of her mind-although, she had to admit, the venting had been much-needed, probably-Emma checked her voicemail and both the National Weather Service's page and the local report the _Good Morning Storybrooke_ "meteorologist" issued that was supposed to take the interplay of atmospheric conditions and magic into consideration.

Even including the storm that damaged Henry's play castle, the winter that Emma came to Storybrooke had been mild by the Maine average... while every winter since (not including the missing year) had been unusually severe. It was presumed to be something due to the introduction of foreign magic-Enchanted Forest magic-into this world that actually had its own native magic despite the name. Somehow the Dark Curse had kept this land's magic out during those 28 years, at least until Emma's arrival, and then when she broke the Dark Curse that magic _freely_ began to flow back in... until it was met by the stronger, more potent magic that Gold unleashed, the combination of which had been regularly causing problems with coming and going from Storybrooke. Of course, those problems would hopefully be resolved now that Emma's own magic had been used to anchor Storybrooke permanently to this world, but the gods hadn't provided a definitive answer; it was possible that the magic of the two worlds was just never going to be completely compatible and if they wanted to keep stable portals and easy spell-casting that came with Enchanted Forest magic, then they'd just have monitor the "Town Line" for any anomalous activity that might turn someone into a tree or cause their car to spin out into one.

Really, that was the least of anyone's worries at the moment, Emma considered as Neal's callused fingers sliding over her middle elicited a hitch in Emma's breathing.

"Sorry," Neal murmured against her neck. "Still soar?"

"In multiple ways, some more pleasant than others," Emma retorted, glancing over her shoulder to meet his grin and chuckle with a kiss that distracted pleasantly from all of her aches and pains.

Kissing escalated to groping hands and, yes, it was probably bending the rules _again_ , but the cameras were off with the power out and it was still early, before she was _technically_ on duty, and all that damned talk about the importance of sex had woken Emma horny. Getting her pants off over the three layers of socks wasn't easy. At least Neal didn't need to completely shed his for a quickie with Emma on top and he didn't offer any protests about occupational propriety, just gripped her hips and squeezed her ass while her own fingers curled around the metal framed headboard of his cot.

Emma was now far enough along in her pregnancy that her belly rubbed against his as she moved, the layers of flannel between them creating added friction and much-needed warmth - and the contact and rocking sensation along with her elevated heart rate and breathing also inspiring familiar acrobatics in her belly. Charley's tumbling routine was something she hadn't experienced during her first pregnancy, chaste but for her own inadequate fumbling in the shower and under the thin sheets, but she had learned to mostly ignore it with the help of hormone levels that made the pleasant tingling rise quickly into a gasping climax, her body clenching, still throbbing as a less striking but still enjoyable orgasm followed when Neal came, reminding Emma-in as much as her floaty mind could process thoughts-of their previous lives as teenagers on the run, seeking to satiate their passions fast and hard in the limited time a stolen motel room allowed. Sexually, she felt like a teenager again, but without the emotional immaturity that still seemed to plague her sister.

Thankfully, her life was more stable, allowing for fast fucks out of need rather than necessity and with the postcoital snuggling that they'd never really gotten to enjoy-that Emma would admit neither then nor now that she did enjoy. Neal would totally admit that he enjoyed it, though, and that was weirdly one of the reasons she loved him.

"Good morning to you too, Sheriff," Neal chuckled after they'd resumed their spooned positions.

"Not quite the elaborate role-play of last night," Emma replied, "but I had an especially weird dream that needed purging thanks to my mother's I _hope_ accidentally switched dream dust eyedrops."

"Dust-mote Land? Fun," Neal chuffed, nibbling on her ear.

"Especially the Monty Python bunny that tried to kill me," Emma groaned, which started Neal laughing against her shoulder. "It's not funny! What if you die in that place and end up in The Netherworld!?'

"It doesn't work that way," Neal told her. "It's not like a Sleeping Curse where your soul actually leaves your body. It's more like the place exists inside your own head."

"But if you die in someone else's head?"

"Naw, it's still your own head just merged through a magical metaphysical connection. If you knew all the magical laws about the place, even if you ended up dropped into someone else's dream, you could take control and shift it into one of yours. Or even just make up the setting."

"Now you tell me!" Emma groaned. "How do you know that, anyway? You have drinks with Morpheus?"

"Yep," Neal answered with an easy grin. "Five drink Morpheus was pretty funny. He made this bet with Dionysus-"

"Okay, that's enough," Emma cut him off. "It's too early to get into the whole thing where you were dead and Lord of The Underworld while I was my twin sister's impotent Jimminy Cricket. And I really have to pee. I think your daughter is head-butting my bladder," she sighed, amending in a griping tone, "Here I thought a normal relationship would mean not having to get out of bed right after sex, but you had to go and knock me up _again_ , Neal."

"Again, blame it on Aphrodite," Neal insisted as Emma extricated herself from their makeshift double bed.

"Oh, I do," Emma retorted, gathering her underwear and pants. "You're both lucky that I've decided not be angry over having my womb commandeered for some true love magic boosting baby plan on account of it helping not end reality... however that even works if I didn't even know I was three days pregnant and _now_ my magic skills are for shit."

"Metal block," Neal told her. "I'm sure Regina's right. That was all desperation and instinct and raw magic. Getting cats out of trees and cars out of snowdrifts, not so much."

"I always did completely _suck_ at actual spells," Emma sighed, heading into the bullpen.

"There's a toilet right here!" Neal called after.

"There's also one next door," Emma replied, "but now that I don't have to pee in a Big Gulp cup in the backseat while you listen to the radio on your walk-man, I'm taking advantage of that."

"Yeah, the radio didn't actually work," Neal admitted. "That's why I never had you wear it. Wasn't really that I was an exhibitionist urinator."

Emma snorted. "Great. Thanks for the chivalry, Neal!" she called after, hurrying to the bathroom next door to the interrogation room. She brushed her teeth and hair while she was in there and rubbed some cocoa butter on her tummy, taking a moment to try to discern any noticeable swelling since the previous morning. A bit bigger, she supposed as her bellybutton had almost completed the transition to outtie.

A tiny foot made a sudden impression beside it, something Emma would have taken the time to marvel at and tickle in one of her secret maternal moments, if that was pre-empted by a _thud_ and the sound of something shattering out in the bullpen. Swearing that she'd again left her gun on her desk, Emma pulled her shirts down and raced into the bullpen...

She screamed as manic pigeon nearly flew right into her face - and instead flew into the booking photo wall with what should have been a cartoon _splat_ before tumbling to the floor where it blinked and stumbled around.

"Why the hell did you let that thing out!?" Emma groaned, pretending she hadn't just screamed like the little girl she never was.

"I didn't. I let it in," Neal answered, gesturing to the scroll attached to its leg as he walked past her.

Crouching down, Neal grabbed the pigeon now without any difficulty, removed the scroll, and then wrapped the bird in a towel. "It's probably confused from hypothermia. I'm surprised it even made it all the way here," he concluded, gesturing to the wax seal on the weathered parchment.

"Philip," Emma groaned and unrolled the paper.

She read the contents aloud:

 **Greetings Sheriff Swan,**

 **I understand our last encounter was somewhat contentious, but I write now not on any matter of politics, rather in requesting your assistance in locating my beloved wife and queen. Aurora has not been seen since midday yesterday when she went for a walk into the adjacent forest to gather chestnuts. Attempts to locate her using a tracking potion have been problematic with the high level of snowfall...**

Emma scanned over the rest, "'Yadda yadda yadda, I hope you can set aside our past grievances and aid in the search. Gratefully yours, Philip II, King of Perraultia.'" She pursed her lips a moment and mused, "So _that's_ his kingdom."

"Seems odd that Aurora would go for a hike just before a blizzard," Neal considered. "It's not exactly chestnut season-"

"And she's not exactly the type to go digging through piles of pine needles for what the squirrels haven't gotten," Emma agreed. "Either she lied to Philip or he's lying. Maybe they had an argument, she finally got tired of being treated like a delicate flower, and ran off. But more likely...it's around the full moon. The high tide reports for the storm surge mentioned it."

"Flying Monkey Herpes?" Neal presumed. "It's like were-syndrome. Kinda, right?"

"But with genital warts and excessive body hair. Although, if it's really bad," she amended after a thought, "there can be neurological impairment."

"Enough to walk into a blizzard?"

"At least to walk into an impending one," Emma nodded. "Hook had to haul in one of dock workers who got bitten and survived for psych holds more than once around the full moon when the guy forgot his meds. And he was only a Flying Monkey for a couple of weeks, not a full year.

"I have copies of Jefferson's maps somewhere. He spent his twenty-eight years of miserable awareness mapping all the farm roads, hiking trails, and streams..."

Opening the storage closet brought a number of things tumbling out. It seemed her father's method of helping clean things up hadn't improved.

"Regina suggested that may be part of the reason Aurora and Philip moved out of town," Emma explained as they searched, "to isolate themselves because of the severity, and rely on some herbal remedies that they trust more than modern medicine...and whatever it is Whale combines that with from his world.

" _Ahaha_!"

She pulled out a cardboard tube and took it to the nearest desk. Sorting through the maps, she found one of the northeastern part of town. "Here. This area here is the encampment. It's a few miles from where Route Six crosses the train tracks and exist town at the north end. The Wildlife Preserve stretches from here, on the wetlands side of Route Six, all the way to here, about a quarter mile from the mine, passing the gorge on the way. That bridge is still out, not that even an insane person would try to cross it, and it never lead to anywhere. The path to the toll bridge was still accessible before the storm, but that's far enough away that unless she was horseback, I can't see her making it there before the storm hit, and it's probably not an area she's frequented either for nature walks or whatever princesses do. This is probably the most likely search area," she concluded of the western half of the Preserve.

Neal was giving her a grin that caused Emma to frown. "What?"

"Nothing. You're just good at this," he answered. "And considering you didn't get much practice before your sister took over and was apparently shit at it, you're clearly a natural, Em."

Flushing a bit, she dismissed, "I did spend a year hunting bail jumpers. Didn't take much to translate cityscapes to forests."

"Ergo, _natural talent_ ," Neal insisted. "You got Enchanted Forest in your DNA, Em, even if you don't think about it that way. Your mom was a great tracker, it sounds like, once upon a time. And you got sword skills from your dad. You should be proud of that. Your parents may not be perfect, but they're good people who want to be good parents. I got my drawing skills from a deadbeat for a mother and my thieving skills from my abusive shithead of a grandfather."

"I guess I could have inherited worse from a worse place," Emma conceded, still examining the maps. "We should start here. She'd be looking for shelter and there are a half dozen hunting cabins, plus the ranger's station that's closed in the winter." She stood up, rubbing her back and sighed at the sight out into the parkinglot. "But if the roads aren't plowed, I don't know that we'll have any better luck than Philip."

"Can't you poof us there?" Neal asked, earning a look from Emma.

"I just got done reminding you that my magic skills have sucked since getting my life back," she said, "probably because I got exactly one week of practice before it was Anna's body and mind making use of my magic. I don't even have the muscle memories of how it works, Neal."

"Oh, I got it!" Neal snapped his fingers and jogged over to the still-piled junk from the closet...which was now heaving.

"Neal, what the hell is-?"

Traffic cones and extra bundles of toilet paper suddenly toppled aside and a rolled up carpet started crawling out like a giant inch worm.

"Why is there a magic carpet in the storage closet?" Emma asked, brow raised.

"Regina was afraid if she took it back to her place it would try to trip her. I guess she ripped off some genie and in retaliation he gave her a jinxed rug that she used to keep locked in a trunk in her vault. But it wouldn't go back in after we got back from Midas island. It was actually kind of hilarious watching her fight a carpet. She gave up and gave it to me."

"And you stuck it in my closet."

"The Department's closet, which is technically city property, so still on Regina if it causes any trouble."

The carpet snapped itself at the pigeon which cooed frightfully, struggling in its towel on the chair.

"Great, you put a demented magic carpet in my closet," groaned Emma. "Fine, put the traumatized bird in with the others, which have hopefully kept all of their crapping inside their coop, and let's take a very cold magic carpet ride. And if you start singing the _Aladdin_ song I won't be showing you my world again any time soon, Cassidy!"

* * *

A magic carpet ride at twenty-five degrees blow wind chill was hard to consider magical. Once on the ground, Emma peeled off the ski mask she'd found in the closet, confiscated from some idiots who'd robbed the Dark Star, and strapped on the pair of snowshoes that she'd never had to use before, but which she'd found years ago when Graham made her clean out the closet.

"Shut up," she complained at Neal's bemused look at her initial attempt to walk in the things. "How are you so good? You hide out in the _back woods_ of Canada, Neal?"

"No, I just spent my childhood in The Enchanted Forest's version of Maine. Miserably cold winters with lots of snow and not enough money for any sleds and reindeer."

"Reindeer are overrated," Emma snorted as they approached the old ranger station. They'd spotted smoke coming out of the chimney, so at the very least they had a squatter.

Once under the cabin's deep overhang, they unstrapped their snowshoes and Emma knocked on the door, "Sheriff's Department! Open up!"

For a moment there was silence, then a muffled, unintelligible sound. Emma announce again, "Sheriff's Department! I can hear you! Open the door!"

Another beat, another muffled-moaning?-sound, but no one came to the door. With a grimace, Emma pulled out her lock-pick kit.

"I got it," Neal offered as more moaning was heard on the other side of the door.

Emma nodded and unholstered her weapon. It only took Neal a few seconds to pick the cheap lock. Gun drawn, Emma stepped into the cabin, prepared for anything.

Maybe not anything.

An old woman was laying dead on the floor, grizzly scars on her neck. And on the cot in the far corner of the room, huddled a figure with glowing eyes, a furry face...and long, auburn hair. It wasn't entirely a Flying Monkey, but it definitely wasn't entirely Aurora either.

"Aw, hell," Emma gasped just before Monkey-Aurora screeched and launched herself in her direction - _with wings_.

Emma had no choice but to fire. She aimed for a wing, spinning Monkey-Aurora and taking her down with a howl.

"Don't let her bite you!" Emma reminded as Neal tried to grabbed the mutated princess' from behind and hold her down, but the magic of her 'condition' gave her superhuman strength and she threw him off, into a chair.

Instead of pouncing again, however, Monkey-Aurora screeched and clutched at her _furry_ midsection, which Emma only then saw was swollen and exposed, having it seemed split the material of her dress.

"Here I thought the damn Monkey curse shit was supposed to hit the pause button on gestation," Emma muttered.

Howling in pain rather than aggression, Monkey-Aurora writhed on the floor.

"That can't be good," Neal uttered, wiping at a small gash on his forehead.

"We have to get her to the hospital."

"Yeah, I don't think a magic carpet ride with a feral Flying Monkey princess is gonna work, Em. You gotta use magic."

"Neal..."

The contraction ebbed and Monkey-Aurora was up again, this time lunging toward Emma with a scream.

It was more desperation than anything that in a swirl of purple smoke, they reappeared in the hall of the ER. Aurora ran into the supply cart that happened to be between them, altering the nearby nurses and orderlies.

"Not another one!" said one of the orderlies.

Clearly, they had done drills on this sort of thing and in a matter of seconds, Aurora had been tranquilized and strapped down to a bed where a team began hooking up IVs and injecting her with needles of oddly colored substances.

"Did she bite either of you?" a nurse asked and Emma shoo her head.

"No. He hit is head," Emma answered. "She's in labor."

"Of course she is," announced Dr. Whale, looking utterly disgusted as he arrived. "During an outbreak, Flying Monkey Herpes can cause miscarriages. But some apothecary has been selling to the forest dwellers who refused to take their medication to stop outbreaks. She had a shop by the docks, but it was shut down a few weeks ago by the Health Department."

"Storybrooke has a Health Department?" Neal asked, genuinely surprised, which earned a sour look from Whale as the medical team cut away the remains of Aurora's dress and- "WHOA!" he choked out at the same time as Emma. "That's _not_ normal!"

"Breech position," Whale explained dispassionately and pulled. "Let's just hope this one doesn't have vestigial wings caught on the pelvic floor."

"Contraction," the nurse who'd put a fetal monitor on Monkey-Aurora's belly announced.

"On the count of three. _One. Two. Three!_ "

The Doctor pulled as the patient's body naturally bared down. There was a sucking sound and then Whale held up a baby... by it's tail! It's long, furry, bloody, prehensile monkey tail that wrapped itself around the arm of his lab coat as it started to cry.

"That makes three already this month!" sighed the nurse, fetching a blanket.

As she did, another nurse announced, "Anti-viral is taking affect."

Indeed, it was. Monkey features were fading, wings shrinking away, bones cracking in a rather sickening way until it was Aurora, laying unconscious on the bed.

"Order an x-ray for her right shoulder blade," Whale stated. "And get our latest Monkey Baby on an IV drop in the NICU. As soon as viral levels drop to specific levels, schedule the tail removal with Dr. Little."

"Wait... the veterinarian?" Emma managed to break out of her stupor.

"He has more experience with tail amputations than I do," Whale shrugged, "and alleviates the patient load."

"What happened to her? I mean, I get that was an outbreak, but I saw her a month ago and she definitely wasn't nine months pregnant. Last time she was pregnant, being a Flying Monkey put her pregnancy on pause..."

"The original transformation and the chronic syndrome that follows are not the same," Whale answered while writing on a chart. "As I have explained at Town Hall meetings, the virus mutated into a 'were-monster' condition that causes the transformation monthly without medical intervention. The severity seems to depend on the length of initial infection in fully Flying Monkey form. Those who were infected for only a few weeks or days, particularly those infected here in Storybrooke which has more of a... hybrid magic than the world in which the viral curse was created just get excessive body hair and genital warts, and sometimes mild psychiatric episodes that can require additional medication to bring down brain swelling.

"As you would imagine, Aurora and her husband have the most severe cases. They're the only survivors from the people Zelena infected in The Enchanted Forest."

"Is that the real reason they left town?" Neal asked. "Because of... ah... ransformations?"

Whale snorted and handed the chart to a nurse. "No. They're backwards, modernity-hating, fanatics. But they also don't take their medication, because I am a 'Devil Doctor'. There are herbal remedies that can lessen the severity, maintain some self-awareness during a transformation, which I believe Ruby used initially when she was training to control her condition on her own. But it's not exactly something that should be taken without supervision and guidance."

"The apothecary?"

"Probably. Rumor has it she's a were-leopard."

"And the accelerated pregnancy?" Emma wondered.

"Ah, probably something her were-beast sensai gave her. There's a high incidence of miscarriage with outbreaks if there's no immediate treatment with stronger dose anti-virals and magnesium sulfate. Magic users? Their solutions is to just speed up the gestation and get the kid out rather than find a way to stop the problem and keep it," he griped. "Don't get me started on all the developmental disorders I'm seeing related to kids whose mothers just wanted to get the whole mess over and done with as quickly as possible. There's doing God's work, and then there's playing God."

"Like raising the dead, you mean?" Emma prompted.

"And look how well that worked out for me?" Whale reminded. "Don't go following your sister into the Cult of Magic Solves Everything, Sheriff."

"I'm doing my best."

Pulling out a prescription pad, he scribbled some illegible words and handed a slip of paper to her and Neal. "Just a precaution. Even if you didn't get any blood on you or get bitten, there's always the risk of saliva from all that snarling and spitting. You've both had the preliminary vaccine, so even herpes petrii dish that she is, a couple of pills will knock out anything. You don't need to worry about having a kid with a tale. But in the future, I would call Animal Control to wrangle feral Flying Monkeys."

"There's Animal Control?" Neal mused, then asked Emma, "Then why are you saving cats in trees?"

"Because it's good PR," Emma grumbled, snatching the paper from Whale and complaining, "Being pregnant in this town is a real pain in the ass with all the magic shit."

"Being a doctor is an even bigger pain in the ass," Whale argued, before continuing on his way.

"Pharmacy?" Neal prompted Emma who scowled.

"These pills are the worst. I had to take them after getting split from Anna in case I was infected from Walsh. They turned my pee purple and it smells worse than asparagus pee."

"Good thing we don't live in a car with a Big Gulp cup for a toilet then," Neal grinned.

"Idiot."

"You love me, though."

"For some reason."

"We can skip that childbirth video now, right?" asked Neal.

"Hell yes," Emma agreed and shuddered. "Forget Monty Python bunnies. My nightmares are now going to be about snatches with bloody monkey tails like giant brown, twitchy tampon strings."

"Thanks for that added image. Now I'm definitely gonna need a couple of weeks before doing any oral stuff," Neal told her.

"I think I can get by with dick and hand stuff for awhile," Emma retorted with a smirk as they reached the Pharmacy.

The pharmacist behind the desk spoke up, "If you have an STD, Sheriff, that's not how that works."

Frowning, Emma handed over their prescriptions. "Just gives us the damn stinky purple pee pills."

Rolling his eyes, the pharmacist retorted as he filled two bottles, "You know, if you collect it and sprinkle it around your garden, it'll keep the chipmunks away."

"Hmm, what about demented enchanted garden gnomes?"

"Can't hurt to try," he shrugged.

Neal told Emma, "You catch that thing with a pool net and I'll pee right on the little bastard."

"Absolutely not!" she retorted. "If it chews through the netting and bites your dick off, then I'm just down to hand stuff. We'll make pee balloons. Henry will enjoy that, as long as we don't tell him the balloons are filled with our pee."

"Ah, family bonding," smiled the pharmacist. "Gets harder and harder the older they get until you have to resort to throwing urine balloons and enchanted lawn ornaments."

Emma took the bottles with a scowl.

* * *

After grabbing some mediocre breakfast from the cafeteria to fit the basic "take with food" prescription guidelines, Emma checked in on things in the Maternity Ward. Aurora was still hooked up to IVs with even more potent meds that would make her pee smell a hundred times worse than the pills and it looked like antibiotics for several more normal slum-living infections from Emma's snooping.

Her kid, meanwhile, was still in the ICU. But down in the regular nursery there was another baby getting diapered with a bandage on his tailbone and the nurse explained that they routinely got patients who'd suffered monkey bites during an outbreak and didn't realize they needed to get treatment or just got herbal stuff, or worse some homeopathic bullshit.

This something Regina might be able to use to negotiate.

But both cell and landlines went down before Emma could get more than a text to her father to try to get a message to Philip that his wife was at the hospital and fine without her being responsible for making any pigeon-popsicle. Naturally, David had responded, after trudging through the snow from the Town Hall to the Station that her mother was adopting the new pigeon and naming it Petey. And then her mother used her father's phone to ask Emma if she'd had eggplant taco emoji in the jail cell followed by a half dozen heart-eyes emojis that made Emma consider grounding Henry for ever teaching her mother how to use a smart phone let alone emojis.

When she returned to the waiting room, Neal reported," Ratched said they'd send an EMT crew out to get the dead woman after the storm."

"Well, no need to hurry as long as it stays colder than the morgue out here," shrugged Emma.

"Assuming the door re-latched so wolves don't eat her," Neal reminded and she winced.

"Good point. I've already seen enough animal-eaten corpses lately..." Off Neal's confused expression, she related, "The not-really-a-dream dream. And, no, I don't want to talk any more about the demented dreams people around here have."

"Fair enough," Neal agreed, flipping a page in the book he was holding.

Emma took a seat on the couch beside him, asking, "What's that? Fairy-nuns have a book cart?"

"Naw, Nurses found it by Aurora's bed in the ER. Must have been in her cloak. Pretty sure it's hers. Haven't seen fancy quill-and-ink penmanship a couple hundred years. Plus, the narration is pretty self-descriptive."

"You're reading her diary, Neal?" Emma uttered in dismay.

"Not a diary. More like a very obviously self-inserted but not outright stated fairytale porn."

"What... _seriously_?"

Emma snatched the leather-bound book away. It wasn't easy at first to read the fancy cursive, but...

" _Oh my god_ ," she gasped. "It's not August. I thought he was circulating those flyers around town as teasers for some fairy tale smut book he was writing inspired by that animated porno. But it's _Aurora_. _She's_ the ghost smut writer!"

* * *

The ice storm was over by the end of the day and the roads cleared by the following. Some fallen trees still needed to be hauled off and damaged powerlines fixed, but Storybrooke was used to being on the mend, and a natural disaster was no sweat compared to the supernatural ones the town faced with greater frequency.

With paper cups of hot chocolate from Granny's, Emma entered the Town Hall where most of the chairs and other standard decor had been returned. A few crates of water still needed to go to the basement, but otherwise it was just arranging the meeting space back to its usual layout, a task her mother appeared to be finishing up, everyone else gone home to tend to frozen pipes and finally snuggle up in their own beds.

"This doesn't have to be finished tonight, you know," Emma told Snow, handing her a cup.

"But it does have to be finished," she answered, "and part of being a good leader is doing more than just delegating. It seems I forgot that somewhere along the way," she sighed unhappily, taking the cup, "or maybe after spending half my life on the run, weighed down by elbow grease, it was nice to just sit on a throne and have adoring subjects get things done. I tried that approach as mayor. It didn't work out so well. But neither did my attempt to fix things myself. I figure if I start with arranging chairs, I'll eventually figure out how to translate running a guerrilla war in a magical forest land to protecting a town of magical people in a non-magical forest without causing any massive electrical system damage."

"Yeah, that wasn't the brightest idea you've ever had," Emma agreed. "Leaky boobs don't translate well to the mechanics of a power plant. But at least Henry was stoked that you fried all the TVs at Regina's house so he got a fifty inch flat screen and new XBox out of it."

"Out of my teacher's paycheck," Snow sighed.

"Hey, I paid for half," Emma reminded, "and by 'me' I mean my sister using my credit card so she could use it as a bribe to get Henry to stay at her house in spite of it being infected by a boozing pirate."

"I know, I know, and then he watched too much TV and played too many video games and didn't study and I faked his report cards because I blamed myself," Snow stated, taking a seat on the edge of the stage. "I really don't want to rehash that, Emma. I feel bad enough that without intervention, because of my lapsing in my responsibilities as both a grandmother and an educator that Henry would have grown up to be an _Uber_ driver. _And_ that I apparently did nothing to help him out of that situation because I was too busy having more children and fawning over you-who-wasn't-you having children. Somehow _Regina_ became the better person of all of us! But I'm not going to let that happen here. And I'm not going to let this town get taken over by some loony witch and her minions who want to reverse-gentrify Storybrooke back to the Dark Ages just because I'm tired of fighting and leading and want to bake cookies and watch Netflix like this was an actual normal town. It's not. And I'm Snow White, rightful Queen to most of the people here who apparently got a big head about it after hardly any time doing actual ruling as Queen."

"You had one of those conversations with Regina where she totally demoralizes you by agreeing with all of your insecurities, didn't you?" Emma surmised, joining her, and Snow grimaced.

"Yes. I had a talk with Archie too. And I really am sorry about how I handled the fallout from that Council Meeting, Emma," Snow told her. "I let my fears over losing control of this situation and failing at all the promises I made to me people get to me. I already failed at so many when the Dark Curse was cast that I know at some point loyalty based on my achievements in the war against Regina and George won't be enough."

"I think we're all facing the possibility that the good we did in the past won't be enough to keep respect now, after everything that's happened," Emma stated after sitting beside her. "So I get it, Mom. You thought it would solve a lot of problems, keep or gain allies who see abandoning Enchanted Forest traditions as betraying where we all came from. Maybe it would. Even if there weren't any fairytales involved, having a daughter who went to prison, gave up an illegitimate kid, and wasted her life for a decade only to shack up with the guy who knocked her up back then, the son of a dangerous thug besides, isn't exactly any parent's dream."

"I'm sure," shrugged Snow, "my parents' dreams for me didn't include starting a war and marrying a peasant whose parents made a deal with the Dark One. Never mind that leading to a very convoluted and painful courtship and a brief few months of peace and happiness before everything fell apart again," she stated, amending, "although, when it comes down to it, all of our miseries and obstacles started with my mother's selfishness and refusal to make amends with the one person she hurt the most, instead of impressing on my father to ensure I was a much better person... his efforts to the point that I fear they had the opposite effect and made me just as certain of my perfection and blind to the suffering I've had a hand in," she concluded with a frown.

"Yeah, weirdly enough," Emma recalled, "that's about what Hook said after we were almost killed by a flying bunny in a dream world."

"I really didn't do that on purpose," Snow insisted. "And neither did David."

"I believe you. More than anything Hook says, anyway," Emma shrugged, "although he wasn't wrong about villains being made, or maybe just amplified in how they obsess over a past slight, by heroes never looking back to right their own wrongs. There's not enough balance there, you know? For the stories to work in the usual cliché way, the bad guys have to obsess and the good guys have to shrug everything off. But that's not how life works. That's not how people work. Sane, healthy ones, anyway. Regina was nuts to hold you, a little kid, completely responsible for what happened to Daniel for decades just because her happy beginning was ruined. Dad is nuts for dismissing Hook killing his father like it's no big deal just so his daughter could have one."

"We all need therapy, that I know," agreed Snow. "But the only shrink we have is one of us. So we just have to read self-help books and watch _Dr. Phil_ and hope for the best, I guess."

With a sad look, she told Emma, "I know that I can't fix all of my mistakes, all of the choices I made that caused you and Anna pain by trying to orchestrate some perfect happiness for you both in the present. It was wrong to side with your father when I knew you wouldn't be happy back in The Enchanted Forest, to lie to you about what we were planning until you didn't have a choice. I was desperate not to lose you again - and desperate to return to a world that made sense, that wasn't tainted by a curse and trying to be this Mary Margaret person who taught school and made birdhouses and wore ugly poncho coats."

"You still wear ugly poncho coats," Emma pointed out with a quirk of her lips and her mother frowned.

"Yes, well, our castle full of gold coins didn't come with us to this world," Snow pointed out, "so I have to make due with what's sold in Storybrooke if I don't want to be mired down in credit card debt like your sister."

"You mean like me," Emma corrected. "And it's really hard trying to prove you have a twin sister who stole your identity when you live in a town that doesn't exist and were found by the side of the road as a baby. So even if I wanted to live in New York, I can't, because I have toxic credit and all anyone has to do is a Google search to find out all the awful, embarrassing things my sister and her jerkoff husband used my credit card like subscription to Porn Hub where they posted a home movie!"

"None of us are happy about that," Snow agreed. "But at least you are collecting the residuals."

Emma rolled her eyes at that and Snow sipped her cocoa before continuing, "Emma, your father and I, we really are sorry how the things that have happened here have made it difficult for you to... maintain any kind of life outside of Storybrooke. We may not have wanted to accept it in the beginning, because your life was so unhappy, that this world still holds an important place in your heart. We understand that it's not something you want to give up completely, that if you had to choose between staying here and going back to our homeworld, you'd choose Storybrooke."

"And I know you want me to choose The Enchanted Forest," Emma told her. "I think half the reason, other than being a lazy bastard, that August convinced me to back into the System was to have the shiftiest life possible, to make me grow up hating this world and dreaming of all that Disney crap for myself one day. Seems to have worked for Anna, your empathy-challenged, yet weirdly romantic daughter. I think I'm just too much of a realist."

" _I_ think you're just too connected to what you've always considered the 'real world'," Snow countered, amending, "and I don't mean that in a bad way. Anna, she doesn't have her own _real_ experiences in _your_ life. She's either indifferent to most of them, hates the decisions you made, or is envious of and so hates the feelings you had and still carry for those experiences."

With a shrug, Snow continued, "I saw someone on a TV, from another country, say that the land they were raised in is like a first love. Good or bad, blissful or painful, it's something you carry with you. The places, the memories, the experiences that made you, nothing is ever going to replace what's unique about that, even if you move far away and find happiness in another land. I think that's a good description, and I think part of it is finding first love there. Your love story is _part of this world_ , so even though you weren't born here, it's in your heart, in your _magic_ , and nothing will change that, no matter how much, at one point, your father and I hoped differently so you could make a clean break and return with us to start over."

"I don't think anyone can really ever start over," Emma argued. "I know I've tried. Getting rid of baggage isn't always that easy, and sometimes you don't really want to chuck all the things you're carrying, no matter how much you tell yourself that you do, or that you need to. I told myself that about my necklace and the Bug a million times. My glasses, the ugly red lipstick... well, the ugly red lipstick I blame on Anna, but she denies it now that she's gone with this whole organic minimal makeup feminist bullshit that Hook talked her into because he doesn't want to stand next to anyone prettier than him."

"He is rather vane," sighed Snow. "And believe me, Emma, I know it's hard to get past reminders and sometimes we need them. But sometimes we don't. I was left with far too many of my mother that only gave me half the story and left me a worse off person for that whose ignorance caused others pain."

"Your parents really were assholes," said Emma.

"They weren't as good as they pretended to be," Snow conceded. "And I don't want to end up known for that."

"So you're setting out chairs."

"Baby steps," Snow replied, sipping her hot chocolate again.

Emma let out a sigh. She really couldn't put this off much longer and it was too warm in here for her _squirrel_ fur coat. "Yeah... ah... so... there's something I've been meaning to mention," she began. "It's not that I didn't want to tell you. It's just... I'm trying to keep this on the downlow and not to be all judgey, but you kind of have a history of sucking at keeping secrets and... ah... so, here's the thing. I'm pregnant," she finished in one breath.

Snow blinked at her and then smiled. " _Finally_. I wondered if you were going to go the whole winter wearing increasingly large coats to hide it. It's been so hard not bringing it up!"

"Wait... you knew?" Emma sputtered and her mother rolled her eyes.

"You actually thought your father could keep that a secret from me? We share a heart, Emma. I could tell he was keeping something secret. He didn't have the luxury this time of me being under a Sleeping Curse while he was awake. But don't be mad. He really did try to be evasive about it and endured several nights on the couch."

"Why didn't you say anything!?" Emma groaned.

"Because you obviously weren't ready to tell me. I know you only told David because it came up with work and at the time he said you weren't really comfortable talking about it and didn't want anyone making a big deal about it when you were just starting to get your life back in order after things with Anna. I've realized that the first time around I pushed too hard, pried too much, tried to force a mother-daughter bond into immediate existence and, as a result, ended up destroying a friendship and making connecting to you that much harder instead. I wish I could go back to the day you broke the Curse and react differently, listen to what you were saying, respect how hard it was for you to reconcile everything that was happening and just trust that it would work out for us both in time. I was selfish and greedy, could only think about what I missed and projected all of my feelings on to you."

Snow took a breath and concluded, "But like the Queen thing, I'm trying to do a better job this time around, so I hope you'll give me that chance, Emma."

"I guess I can try," Emma replied.

"Yay!" Snow exclaimed and set her cup down. "I'm going to hug you now!"

Emma groaned but didn't resist her mother's embrace. The hug actually didn't last long, Snow pulling away and gagging like a sick cat.

"Gaah! I got fur in my mouth. Is your coat shedding!?"

"Yeah, I don't think it's rabbit fur," Emma replied.

"I did buy it from that sketchy cart across from Magical Meats," Snow admitted. "I'm sorry! I ordered a coat, but it didn't make it onto the train. There's some kind of stupid spell that's only allowing in essentials for minimal effect on the magic or something. Regina explained it. And I didn't know what else to get you."

"It's okay. Maybe Sparkles can use it as a chew toy."

"You know," Snow suggested, "There's no reason you and Neal couldn't get married in Central Park or Las Vegas or some beach in Florida if you wanted."

Emma gave her a side-eye, responding, "Other than a magical barrier spell that has literally made it impossible to leave for months and a horde of scheming criminals who're probably hoping I will cross the town line - or find a way to toss me over it - the moment it drops so they can take advantage of Storybrooke being sans savior to stage a coupe? Not to mention I'll be seven months pregnant by then, so not really in the mood to sashay down any aisles looking like an overstuffed brautworst."

She drank her cocoa and reiterated, "I know that marriage is your thing, Mom, but I'm not sure it's what I want. My life is still a jumbled mess that I'm trying to figure out, and I don't buy the fairytale line that being married will somehow miraculously untangle it because I publicly proclaim my feelings and manage to fit a ring on my swollen finger."

"Your fingers are not swollen and you won't look like an overstuffed anything," Snow told her. "You're just used to being part of your sister who I can only hope will gain a good twenty pounds before she gets back. I really did worry you had an eating disorder..."

"But Archie thinks it was a result of psychosomatic stress from the conflict with my subconscious influence fighting the curse, or caused by magic from the curse iself," Emma nodded. "I think it's just Hook's implicit fat-shaming and the booze."

"Yes, well, either way, you've nothing to be self-conscious about. Every inch of you is perfect, Emma, from the bottom to the top. And it _is_ true, you know, that boys like a little more booty to hold at night," Snow concluded.

" _Mom_!" Emma choked.

"What?" Snow shrugged. "The physical aftermath of your brother might not have made for flattering khaki pants, but-"

"Just stop!" Emma cut her off.

Snow rolled her eyes. "Well, it's oddly satisfying that even if we're the same age, I can still make you uncomfortable talking about sex."

"I'm not sure whether it's more 'sex' or more than you listen to Top Forty pop music for teenage girls."

"It's a catchy song and pop songs are good for my morning cardio."

Snow put her hand over her daughter's. "Look, Emma, we're not going to ask you to compromise your beliefs, or your dreams of how you want to your story to go. We already made that mistake forcing our ideas of weddings on your sister, feeding her curse's ugliness to make other people's joy into some painful farce to get attention - when what the goodness in her wanted was to just get married on Killian's ship with her family."

"That _was_ kind of Henry's fault trying to sabotage things," Emma reminded. "He knew if he undermined what they wanted, then you guys would step in and turn into mother-and-father-of-the-bride-zillas and the way he saw it, end up with the whole thing being called off. And if not, there was the hexed ring thing that he thought he hexed wrong when it didn't work, what with one half of the spell involving _me_ , not his aunt... who then fixed that mistake, because she has some weird prosthetic kink."

Snow blinked at that, momentarily confused. "Hold on, I thought it was the Sorcerer who altered Henry's jinx as a distraction to nab him at the wedding. You're saying _Anna_ did that? _To her true love? At her own wedding_!?"

Emma shrugged. "Yep. Maybe that good part of her wanted to sabotage the wedding she didn't want to have and used the bad part of her to get it done in a pretty nasty way. Not that I'm complaining. Completely destroying Hook's hand is hilarious and totally in keeping with their toxic relationship."

"It's certainly not a pleasant revelation," grimaced Snow, amending, "But if we don't figure things out with Aurora and Philip, we might all end up losing limbs in some medieval midnight raid. _Which_ is whey I think we should have ball."

"A _ball_ ," Emma groaned. "It was bad enough enduring those with Anna. I can still feel the damned corsets and _I_ don't have any rhythm."

"Well, lucky for you," Snow pointed out, "being pregnant exempts you from both corsets and dancing. But much as you balk at the royal responsibilities of this family, _given your chosen occupation_ , not from matters of peacekeeping in this town. And in this town, some things have to be done the old way, and that includes what this world calls 'soft diplomacy' done in the manner of throwing balls. You rescued Aurora and we have to capitalize on them owing us a gesture of gratitude."

"Attending a ball."

"Yes! If they have any honor, or want to restore some after betraying us to Zelena," Snow stated, "then they will have to accept an invitation. And since we'll throw it in Enchanted Forest style, they won't be able to weasel out of it with some argument about exposure to modern things."

After a pause, she continued, "We'll have to hold at the Sorcerer's Mansion. It's not ideal with the portal there, but it is owned by the city. We'll need some magic to conceal the electrical and plumbing upgrades it got in this world, but otherwise it has the large ballroom, library, and sitting, smoking, and trophy rooms, all the things needed for balls or salons. All royalty will be invited along with the nobility of each kingdom. And we can hold it as a celebration in your honor!"

" _My_ honor?" Emma winced. "No one is going to want to honor the pregnant sheriff shaking up with the son of the Dark One, Mom."

"People might have some personal value-based judgments," Snow stated, "but your _are_ heir to our kingdom and they will honor established traditions. You never had a first ball as a girl to acquaint yourself with court society or a presentation ball to meet allies and begin an introduction into political realms-"

"Also meant to find me a husband."

"Well, yes, technically," Snow conceded, "we would have hoped some prince, knight, or nobleman caught your eye with a bonus of strengthening or forming an alliance that would help our kingdom. But we never would have forced any marriage, made a contract the way Aurora and Philip's parents did. It's common, of course, but I personally consider it detestable and an affront to our world's basic belief in true love. It's one thing to facilitate an arranged marriage for the good of the people between consenting heirs who understand what they are sacrificing. It's another to use magic at infancy to force two people into marriage twenty years in the future just because you're besties and one night over mead on your annual hunting trip you decide that the coolest way to show the world you have the best bromance is to contract your babies to get married and unite your kingdoms in a way your bromance can't," she snorted in conclusion.

Emma choked on her cocoa and raised a brow. "Did you just _Brokeback Mountain_ a _Sleeping Beauty_ prequel?"

Snow frowned. "What?" Then she thought a moment and her eyes went wide. "Oh my god! _King Stefan and King Hubert were gay lovers who really wanted to unite their kingdoms by marrying each other!_ "

* * *

 **AN:** The previous chapter note about the name of Philip's kingdom should have gone with this chapter, sorry! I picture Fisher Stevens as the pharmacist Saul he played in _The Night Of_ , making John Stone's every visit to pick up medication an exercise in sarcasm-delivered-embarrassment. The song is "All About the Bass" by Meghan Trainor. I decided to put a spin on the canon fairytale backstory that Aurora and Philip's fathers were best buds who wanted to solidify their bromance by contracting their kids to be married at Aurora's birth. I mean, wouldn't the story be so much more interesting if all that shit with Maleficent went down because of those two dudes having a clandestine romance while committing to loveless marriages to sire heirs for their kingdoms?

 **Next up:** A ball.


	27. Ball to the Wall

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Celebratory Note: THIS SHIT SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELLED!**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN**

 **BALL TO THE WALL**

It was unusual for David to wish for a Fraturday night of backlogged paperwork at the Sheriff's Station, but so it was as he finished his last forms for the day early and began gathering his things to start the weekend off early with one of his wife's most favorite things in the world: a ball.

The ball had originally been scheduled for Saturday, but with the first rain storm of Spring predicted to move in over the weekend, so with an attempt to make it traditionally authentic with horse-drawn carriages, the event had been moved up to Friday night with clearer skies and more bearable evening temperatures hovering around forty rather than thirty. As a result, work had to wrap early to ensure everything was running smoothly before actually getting ready himself, a task which David had grudgingly agreed to oversee since in _this_ world being royalty didn't come with free party planners and Emma would more than likely have thrown a fit and boycotted the entire thing if she'd had to be involved in more than putting on a dress and making smalltalk with royalty.

Even with that alone, Emma looked even more unenthusiastic than he did as she locked her office. It wasn't that his eldest daughter hated dressing up or dancing or parties, but was far less comfortable with her birthright than Anna and the sorts of parties that required putting on airs along with the overly expensive and frilly gowns and jewels.

"Hey, you okay?" David asked as Emma rubbed her stomach through her fuzzy sweater. There was no mistaking that she was pregnant now and she glowed every bit as brightly as her mother had even when looking grumpy.

"Fine," Emma sighed, pulling on her jacket. "Your granddaughter has just been kicking me in the same spot for hours. I'm sure I have internal bruising."

"She must be excited about the ball," David joked while risking a rebuke for placing his hand where hers had been to feel those increasingly strong kicks that reminded him so much of Emma compared to her less active brother. Emma wasn't fond of people touching her belly, though she generally tolerated family taking umbrage unless she was in a particular mood.

"Unlike her mother," Emma complained. "I really don't think this is necessary."

"And _your_ mother really thinks it is," David countered. "Back in our world, there were always balls to celebrate Spring as soon as the weather warmed enough for people to more easily travel the carriage roads. For the allied kingdoms it was a time to both discuss political changes and future interests in person and to introduce the next generation coming of age to that sphere of diplomacy-"

"And secure potential marriages," Emma cut him off. "I know the whole story. I got enough lessons from Mom and Regina since she started planning this thing. But I'm too old, too pregnant, and too shacking up with the guy who fathered my town teenage son to be 'presented' as some virginal, virtuous princess dressed in white and passed around to dance with every eligible prince in the hopes of true love ridiculously sparking during a waltz and leading to some passionate and angsty love affair involving vengeful witches and curses before, after barely actually getting to know each other at all between the mortal peril and prudish traditions, we get married in a spectacle of a ceremony with horse-drawn carriages and cathedrals for the purpose of making babies that defines true happiness. You know, like my sister, the second time around and minus the babies aside from the _Alien_ incident."

David pulled on his jacket and argued, "Yes, well, your mother and I both have some regrets about how we handled your sister's nuptials, but the first time she wanted it done quickly in case she died fighting Fiona, so we went all out in as much as we could to give her one perfect day. And then we didn't want her to feel like being second born and carrying that curse made her any less of a princess in our eyes. That sort of thing is important to Anna, even if, in hindsight, we should have just thrown _her_ a ball and let her get married the way she originally wanted. But your sister has some contradictory personality quirks that make it hard to read what she wants."

"I think those 'quirks' are called her curse making her mirror what other people want either because they're scumbags and her curse loves associating with scumbags to reinforce its evil-ness," Emma argued as she finished closing the blinds, "or because they're good people and her curse loves screwing over good people by either ruining something they love or using their love to make them do something they hate and ruin it themselves."

"Yes, well, maybe," David conceded. "But Anna isn't here and you _deserve_ a ball, Emma, even if you don't feel enough of a connection to where you came from to find meaning in our family traditions."

"Even if I'm an old maid with two bastard kids engaged in an intimate affair out of wedlock or engagement?" Emma countered, brow raised.

"You're not old or a maid of any kind," argued David while locking the door behind them. "And I'm sure most people here, no matter what their own personal beliefs about marriage and returning home one day, understand that having grown up and fallen in love in this world you have both a different frame of reference and a connection to the world beyond this town that holds an importance in your heart."

Emma groaned. "So, basically, Mom has been telling everyone that it's not that I don't want to get married, it's that I want to be able to get married outside of Storybrooke because that's where my love story started? She intentionally misinterpreted what I said-"

"And being Queen is being a politician as well as a thrower of balls in our world, Emma," David reminded her as the crossed the parkinglot. "We don't have parliaments to do that work while we just sit on thrones and meet with dignitaries for photo ops. And everyone understands that certain things are only said for the sake of appearances. If she was placing any real weight on that, then this would double as an engagement ball and Neal would have had to join me to get fitted for a fancy suit and royal-required accessories."

"Fine, I guess," she conceded as they walked toward Main Street, "but I get to be both annoyed about my love life needing PR statements to be acceptable to everyone whose business it's not _and_ that Neal doesn't have to endure all this stuff, because he's the man I love and father of my children and it's ridiculous that some protocol means if we're not engaged or married that he can't attend as my plus one, and since he's not royalty or nobility he can't attend at all and make this whole mess slightly more bearable.

" _You_ got to attend balls with Mom when you're technically just as much of a dirt poor peasant as Neal," Emma harumphed, "accept that you married Mom without anyone knowing that so now you've got titles and shit."

"Which George would argue are illegitimate and illegal and pure horse shit," David reminded. "But you're right that it isn't fair. Unfortunately, that class structure is part of our world's foundation and the most important of the dignitaries we've invited still uphold those traditions and values. They didn't get cursed with memories of a different, more egalitarian way of life in which status can be earned or lost regardless of birth. And most rulers are not as open-minded as King Herman to give his son permission to marry a peasant, or King Midas even to let his daughter marry a knight from the lower, what we would consider middle class, nobility - thought that's probably more just to do with money not being an issue in his kingdom."

"It's hard to like a guy who makes a hobby of having his knights kill magical creatures so he can turn them to gold and put them on display," Emma remarked.

"Yes, well, many leaders are far worse than trophy hunters," David told her. "And my point," he continued as they approached the beauty salon, "is that sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the beginning to reach compromises. We have to do things a certain way because it brings others who don't agree with all our ways to the negotiating table. That doesn't mean we condone all of it still, but it makes it possible to then open a dialogue to educate them and at very least foster tolerance for change while ensuring that some important traditions that connect us to our home, our past and our ancestors aren't thrown away and forgotten."

After a pause, he conceded, "Maybe they won't be swayed to move into town and join the Storybrooke workforce or even send their children to our schools. But maybe they _will_ agree to improvements in healthcare, sanitation, and the construction of more permanent and safer buildings. It's less an issue of them wanting to maintain their own separate kingdom as it is the comparatively dangerous state of it that puts us all at risk for problems that were commonplace and seemed unavoidable back home but which technology here has all but eliminated."

Emma sighed and agreed, "I guess if it will stop people from shitting in the river, it's worth the indignity of being stuffed into a poofy ballgown like a bratworst in a too-small casing."

"Don't be silly," David told her as they slowed outside the entrance. "It might not be the silvery white dress festooned with flowers, feathers, and jewels that I dreamed of you wearing to your presentation ball it's a lovely gown." That drew a look from Emma which he ignored. "And you look lovely no matter what you're 'stuffed into'. Bringing new life into the world is always worth celebrating."

Emma groaned and rolled her eyes. "You're just saying that because you're my father so you have to. And I'm just lucky that polite society rules meant Mom couldn't turn this ball into a baby shower. I _know_ she has a color-coded binder for that too. I saw her making changes to the one she'd started working on for Anna before her kid turned out to be an incubus."

"Yes, well, your mother has color-coded binders for a lot of things. She was a teacher for three decades. Some Curse habits are hard to break," David stated. "And she only does it out of love. She wants you to have all the things she thinks you deserve, which includes experiencing a ball as a _real_ princess and not just by proxy of your sister impersonating 'Princess Leia' at my sham of an engagement ball so that you can _legitimately_ hate it instead of just on hearsay principal."

David opened the door for her. "Now go and be nice to everyone and do as your mother says. She's very nervous about this."

" _Yes, Dad_ ," Emma rolled her eyes again before heading into the fray of princess who'd rented out the salon to get ready for the ball.

Before he left, Snow came darting out, "Wait wait!" She handed him trash bag. "Duende for Granny. They've been knocked out, but they won't stay that way long."

Taking the bag of stunned pixie-like creatures and after giving his wife a peck on the cheek for luck with Emma, David continued past the salon to Granny's for both a strong cup of coffee and overseeing the transport of catering items from the diner to the Apprentice's old mansion, the only building other than the convent in town that was "authentic" enough to Enchanted Forest architecture to be easily converted with magic and elbow grease into a suitable venue.

"Your Highness," Granny curtsied and tittered a bit as he found her taking things from the walk-in.

"Funny." He handed her the bag that had started to move. "From the salon."

"Oh! Wonderful! That will help. We've had to limit dishes that require more exotic meats, stick to easily sustainable breeding for those since our important market is currently shutdown. Regina gave me a recipe for Croquetas de Duende that should work perfectly," she related, stuffing the bag into an ice chest. "I'm also making a Broxa Bruschetta and I'm going to try out a fried calamari recipe using Kapa instead. Smee harvested a whole bunch from a winter hibernation den under the Cannery wharf. A good thing too, or they'd be waking up and tormenting the fisherman soon. Other than that, it will be the usual of venison, chicken, and duck. But probably wise to forgo any roast swan."

"Probably," David agreed. "Emma told Snow she was glad her wedding dress which was Snow's mother's got burned because of all the innocent swans killed to make it and eaten while wearing it."

"Yes, I remember that particularly heated argument that began over Emma's marital status," Granny replied. "Snow ended up in tears after your daughter stormed out. I'm glad that whole misunderstanding has been resolved, even if I gained business with people showing up just to see them arguing. People love family drama on display. But my hearing aids don't particularly like all the shouting. And I know you three love each other, even if that whole twin thing has turned your family dynamic a bit upside-down."

"A bit," David agreed with a lopsided smile while helping carrying crates to a truck in the ally out back.

"I understand, you know," Granny told him. "Once Ruby knew the truth about herself she changed. Not entirely in a good way. She was feeling it all out for herself, making a lot of bad choices, getting involved with her mother's cult and all of that and even afterward taking a certain pleasure in the violence of killing of Regina's guardsman and George's soldiers. I knew that good, kind girl was still in there and I didn't agree with how she was letting that part of herself get lost under the thrill of her newfound power. It took three years of war for her to start coming back to herself, finding a balance.

"So it's not strange," she continued, "that you never considered that the changes Emma seemingly underwent was evidence of her literally not being herself. She'd just discovered she was a fairytale princess and had magical powers with a destiny attached after only a few months of regaining a son. She'd lost an old love and found a new and rebellious romance that I know we _all_ considered was rushed out of grief and over her confused feelings about having a brother that would get all the experiences with you that she never would."

"Which is why," sighed David, "we were so desperate to give her that wedding. And then _Anna_ another more traditional wedding. We don't want either of them to feel like not growing up with us as their parents makes them any less loved than their brother or any less worthy of the royal aspects and responsibilities of this family. I suppose we both just wish that Emma wasn't so dismissive of it and Anna didn't... well..."

"Put her own special skanky spin on it?"

"Not so much 'her own' if you knew anything about my brother," grimaced David. "I gathered from George's servants and guardsman that it took a lot of effort even after years of lessons and punishments to get him to attend balls without playing grab-ass or even just flirting inappropriately with all of the women, single or married."

"So... essentially a more sober and two-handed version of your son-in-law," mused Granny to David's dismayed expression. "Oh, don't pretend you haven't thought about that. Anna found a masculine mirror for her inclinations in the same way your brother, for all his philandering, apparently kept going back to that slutty, boozing mercenary who was an uncursed lady version of him."

Stowing some boxes, she shrugged and concluded, "It makes sense I suppose that they'd seek out a suitably devious partner. At least Anna's curse was stunted enough that she's not gone around playing with innocent hearts and ruining reputations... other than, I suppose, subconsciously encouraging her inebriated sister into one night stands and forcing Emma to work harder to earn the trust and respect of newer residents who've got that default lazy slut view in their minds."

"I'd rather not be reminded of any of that, thanks," David retorted, loading in the last box. "I want to see at least one of my daughters as being somewhat virtuous and not involving herself in promiscuous activities or proclivities. It was hard enough making peace with Emma's teenage relationship with Neal originally."

"Even if back home, had she not been at least engaged by seventeen, she'd be considered a difficult match and throwing away important procreational years by being behind the curve and on her way to old maid status?" Granny pointed out.

"Back home she would have been _engaged or married_ ," David reiterated the main point, "not stealing food and living out of stolen vehicles. Things would be a lot less complicated than they are now."

"Life is _always_ complicated, Charming," argued Granny. "If it wasn't this it would be something else equally aggravating in its own way. Perhaps it would be your grandson getting that lesbian girl from Camelot pregnant at fifteen and then both of them would be miserable for the rest of their lives after a swordpoint wedding."

"I suppose that's a possibility," winced David. "Glad we avoided that mess."

Granny handed him a menu and told him, "Emma will pull through, we'll settle things with those late comers, and then you can get back to focusing on family and allaying whatever insecurities that girl and her man still have about fitting in with all us modern fairy-tale-raised, crown-following folks so you'll be ready to help Anna with whatever she needs when she returns from her sexcation."

"Please don't call it that," David groaned and excused himself to head to the mansion. He still had to give the service staff a final briefing, check in with Jefferson who had the adjacent property about his rented stables being ready and his driveway cleared for carriages. Also, he had to make sure that Neal was making sure Tinkerbell, their car-to-carriage spell-caster for the evening, didn't get stoned - which would probably be the hardest task of the day.

* * *

It definitely felt weird standing in the livingroom of an average looking farmhouse dressed up like a Disney princess. Emma felt like she was going to some cosplay convention, accept that she wasn't made up like any particular character, and there were definitely no pregnant Disney princesses... though the dark blue gown's high waist and ruffles did a commendable job at a slimming illusion she supposed.

At least being pregnant had saved her from the ridiculously corseted type with the flat front and stiff off-the-shoulder sleeves that cut into one's back and lead to sweaty armpits that Anna had worn for that time travel engagement ball as well as her last wedding.. .and that her mother had chosen for herself.

Squeaking stairs turned her attention from the mirror on the wall between the kitchen and livingroom where she was trying to fix her hair to Snow's arrival, decked out in violet satin, silver beads, matching gloves, and magical hair extensions.

"YOUR HAIR!" Snow shrieked, pulling off her gloves and hurrying over to take the silver and pearl apple blossom pins from Emma's hands. "Honestly, I step away for half and hour and you've undone _everything_ , Emma!"

"I was trying to take a nap and they were digging into my skull!" Emma whined. "It was hard enough stuffed into this dress with the stupid ties in the back without feeling like I was getting acupuncture in my scalp on top of it!" she complained, reaching around to pull at the dress strings because no one had invented zippers in The Enchanted Forest.

"I _told_ you to take a nap before getting dressed," Snow reminded while she worked, teasing and twisting the somewhat flattened curls that Emma had gotten earlier that day.

"And I told _you_ that wasn't going to happen when your granddaughter was doing cartwheels."

Snow let out a sigh as she finished. "All right, well, this will have to do until we get there. I'm sure Tinkerbell can fix it properly and hopefully this will all be over by midnight so no one will get stuck in the eye by your hairpins when it's all undone and they go flying everywhere."

"Har har," Emma scowled at her mother. "I really am trying here, you know. Balls _aren't_ my thing."

"You've never been to real ball, Emma," Snow reminded while gathering an Enchanted Forest version of a pasmina to drape more complicatedly around Emma's shoulders with fancy buttons and more pins.

"I have perfectly good memories of Anna going to that sham engagement ball and that weird _Wickerman_ cosplay thing in Camelot."

"Exactly," Snow stated as if that made her point. " _Both_ were shams. Everyone was _miserable_ at both while pretending otherwise to please their rulers."

"So.. .like I'm gonna be tonight?"

Snow glowered and Emma flashed a smirk, both getting caught in the flash of a camera. David was standing on the stairs looking pleased with himself as he held Henry's old camera.

Walking out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn, Henry sniggered and announced, "Wow, Mom, you actually look like a prin-"

"Don't make me wash your mouth out with soap!" Emma cut him off.

"Henry," David told the eye-rolling teenager, "go watch your uncle before he sticks something up his nose."

" _Yes, Grandpa_ ," he groaned and disappeared up the stairs while David fixed the vest of his formal brocade prince suits in the usual dark shade of burgundy.

"Are you sure we're all going to fit in the truck?" Emma asked.

"It'll be a tight squeeze, but the heater's malfunctioning again," David reported, "so we might need the body heat."

"Too the ball!" Snow giggled.

Emma grimaced and David gave her a reassuring smile as they followed out the front door and hurried to the pickup in the driveway where it was something of a processes getting their skirts in and David's ceremonial scabbard unbuckled and put in the back along with his sword. Teeth chattering, they finally got the doors closed and David pulled out of the farm's driveway.

"Tell me," Snow began the moment they were off the bumpy gravel road onto the highway, "the history of our kingdom."

" _Seriously_?" Emma groaned. "You're quizzing me _now_?"

"The radio is also on the fritz," said David. "Your brother stuck a Pop-Tart in the tapedeck."

"It doesn't hurt," Snow insisted, "to make sure you're prepared, Emma."

"Because someone is going to ask me for a history lesson while eating weird pickled magical creature organs and doing the waltz?"

"You never know."

Emma sighed and began, "Once upon a time-" That did not get a humorous look from her mother and she rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll be serious. By the end of the Ogres War only two clans remained intact in the northern region of The Enchanted Forest: House Märchen and House Walden. Together, and with smaller coastal island clans that had pledge allegiance to them, they held off an Ogre army for two weeks at the Battle of Apfelblüten, until the truce was achieved by Rumplestiltskin. The fortress there became Apfelblüten Castle from which Queen Margaretha and King Eckhard ruled, abandoning their clan sigils for an apple blossom that is still used today even though the famous grove of apple trees that was turned into a royal orchard died during the terrible winter when Princess Snow White was born."

"A terrible thing," sighed Snow. "It took most of my childhood to recover all the original varieties that previous kings and queens had acquired through travels and visits from dignitaries and added to the original grove with the original apple tree. My mother cried when it died. My father had my crib made from the wood. And it would have been your crib if peace with Regina didn't require abandoning that Apfelblüten. It was supposed to be your bother's... but maybe it's for the best that it didn't come with either curse and that part of our past is left there."

"Maybe," shrugged Emma. "Too bad your father wasn't as open-minded and was so stuck on getting that orchard back that he agreed to marry Regina for her family tree."

Snow grimaced at that. "Which he planted in the same courtyard to replace the first tree had been nurtured by generations of our family. I suppose some would call that bad karma. But he _did_ restore the orchard and that orchard served all of us well when we were stranded there for a year, surrounded by Ogres and Flying Monkeys."

David turned the truck onto one of the small residential roads leading into the hills and Snow nudged Emma. "Keep going. That's only half of the kingdom."

Groaning, Emma continued, "King Leopold got Princess Regina and her apple tree. But he didn't get any sons or more daughters. They had a cold marriage. And Regina adopted her mother's spiteful plotting against the crown to scrap the 'consort' part of her title and just be Queen. She'd have as much claim as anyone with Snow White dead, maybe more than the nobility being a blood princess from another kingdom that had several times married into the extended royal family in past generations. But she failed in her assassination attempt and so her claim was always in jeopardy until Snow White finally challenged her openly after allying with the man everyone believed was Prince James of Schönerwald, sometimes called 'The Dragon-Slayer', sometimes called 'Prince Ladies Man', usually called an unbearably arrogant dick behind his back, so it was a real surprise of a match chalked up to a complete _Man In the Iron Mask_ style personality transplant advertised as the result of a blow to the head delivered by Snow White originally during a carriage robbery on his way to his engagement ball but because my stupid sister went back in time, that head injury happened instead at the engagement ball for his marriage to Princess Abigial of New Phrygia - not to be confused with Original Phrygia, an island kingdom off the southern continental coast that was destroyed during the Atlantian War when King Titan IV and his half-brother King Poisedon IX really went at it with help of the sea goddesses Calypso and Ursula, split and submerged the southern continent into North and South Atlantiaand the resulting tidal wave wiped out all but the island of Dulaca that remains a small principality boasting a significant navy and nautical exploration force and has had on and off good relations with the merpeople - better lately since Prince Eric married Princess Ariel and permanently took King Titan's youngest daughter and disgraced kleptomaniac-hoarder off his hands out of the running for Queen of Atlantia."

" _Emma_!" Snow scolded.

"What? She totally is! _And_ she stalked him from a distance and he tried to get up in recently acquired vagina on their first date! That part was even in the Disney movie!"

"Yes, well," Snow conceded, "accurate or not, that does not go into polite conversation, Emma, any more than you and Neal fornicating in the back of a stolen car and filthy motel rooms or _The Underworld_."

"Fornicating?" Emma snorted. "We never 'fornicated'. That's what Anna and Hook do. I'll agree to 'criminal copulation' if we're going to use fancy biological SAT word terminology instead of having at it like horny teenagers or making sweet undead love to _Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer_."

"Damn it, really!?" David complained. "Now I can't listen to that song! Not that it's a good song, but come on! Why were you even listening to that?"

"I think it was part of the neighbor's punishment... or they were using it to punish everyone else in the building," Emma shrugged.

"Well, that explains why you got all sniffly when your brother kept playing that song over Christmas," smiled Snow.

"I did not get 'sniffly'," Emma argued, crossing her arms. "It was a normal pregnancy symptom."

"Uh-uh."

"Shut up!"

"Don't tell your mother to 'shut up'," David scolded. "And don't call your sister 'stupid' either."

"We're the same age and she didn't raise me," Emma pouted. "And _Anna_ was stupid to run toward a portal when she had no magic!"

"Just finish with the history lesson," Snow sighed. "We're almost there."

Emma shrugged. "Fine. Dulaca was another ally of Märchenwald and Prince Eric used his navy to blockade channels and river outlets when 'Prince James' declared open rebellion against his 'father' after failing to marry Princess Abigial resulting in a kingdom civil war. Hispanola, remained an ally of Regina, now called 'The Evil Queen', due to blood ties, and also signed a treaty with Schönerwald and was presumably backed financially Hispaniola's ally El Dorado, a small, southern mountain-region banking kingdom outside of The Enchanted Forest known for large gold deposits. Presumably, if King George had just been able to secure a treaty with El Dorado originally, the whole mess with Midas and fake Prince James never would have happened, there would have been no war, and I either wouldn't exist or have grown up on some sheep farm, so good for the guided streets people, I guess."

"There's nothing wrong with sheep farms," David grumbled.

"Accept that they're full of sheep so everything smells like sheep," Emma argued. "So, long story short, you guys won the war, yadda yadda yadda, Regina cast the Curse and everyone came to Maine and lost their memories until I showed up, then Rumplestiltskin's daddy Peter Pan happened, everyone went back, you recast it for in hindsight stupid and unnecessary reasons, and even more people came to Maine, then time travel happened because of Cora's bastard estranged nutjob first daughter, the universe got degraded, Emma 2.0 was a loser who married her grandfather's killer after they both became Dark One's and inadvertently helped King Arthur try to take over the world, and then Rumplestiltskin's mom tried to end reality but failed so our messed up royal family had a weird Da Vinci's _Last Supper_ themed celebration dinner where everyone who hates each other pretended to get along for an hour while endlessly passing food down a ridiculously long table. Well, everyone but me because I was trapped inside my Evil Twin sister who's gotten to blow out the candle at every one of my damn birthday parties since coming to this town. _The End_."

Snow frowned at her, imparting, "You left out a great deal of history. You didn't mention King Herman's kingdom Rhodopisia, ruled by King Herman, or, more importantly the kingdoms of Perraultia and Battistia which remained neutral during the war as they were suffering succession crises of their own or the mountain principality of Avonlea, which was over-run with Ogres. never mind the more distant known realms of Shangri-La, Agrabah, and Arendelle."

"You really want me to get into Prince Thomas' ladies shoes and foot fetish? The whole pretty likely _Brokeback Mountain_ thing with King Hubert and King Stefan? That the only thing Avonlea is known for is Maurice letting his only daughter live with the Dark One after he failed to marry her off to a legit sadistic psychopath who tortured animals for fun that he figured was the best he could do without feeling bad since she'd probably turn straight up nuts like her mom?"

"Hold on," David interrupted, "what about Philip and Aurora's fathers?"

Snow sighed and related, "If you read between the lines in the 'Sleeping Beauty' backstory in Henry's book, it sounds like they were gay lovers. Which we are _not_ going to bring up."

As her mother gave her a stern look, making Emma feel like a teenager, but Snow's expression did soften and she concluded, "We are really sorry about the birthday parties, Emma. Though, to be fair, there were ony two not counting the year we were separated, that Wish Realm nonsense one wasn't fun for anyone, and I accidentally picked up carrot cake and wasn't entirely pleased at spending a good portion of my paycheck on that ugly blouse your sister liked for the last one."

"That really _was_ ugly," Emma shuddered. "It was plaid _and_ had flowers. What is _wrong_ with her?"

"I'm just glad she doesn't dress like Ruby when she was cursed," stated David. "That's good enough for me."

He slowed to what looked like a valet kiosk at the bottom of the small hill's private driveway. They all got out and Tinkerbell, who seemed to be wearing Cruella's old heavy fur coat-clearly therapy for stealing from dead bodies wasn't quite working for her - over a green and purple dress waved a wand and uttered in a very bored tone, "Bipity, bopity, boogers."

A poof of purple and green magic swirled around the truck and it was transformed into a very fancy carriage with two confused-looking horses.

"Boogers?" Emma repeated.

"Sneezy just snotted on me before you got here."

"I said I was sorry!" the Dwarf apologized while sniffling. "It's the cold!"

"Do you think you can fix Emma's hair?" Snow asked the ex-fairy and Tink shrugged.

"Sure. Just be aware the warranty runs out at midnight. " _Bipity, bopity, BONERS_!"

" _Really_?" Snow huffed, not pleased while Emma sniggered and David looked uncomfortable.

"I'll be your coachman," Happy broke the tension, holding open the carriage door.

"This seems," Emma began, "like a lot of unnecessary-"

"Just get in and pretend you're on a ride at Disneyland!" Snow cut her off.

"In an uncomfortable dress and heals with hairpins that could fly out and impale someone? Plus, I don't think they let pregnant women on the-"

" _Emma Ruth Swan, so help me-"_

* * *

It was a short carriage ride up the hill, all for the sake of appearance. A short, uncomfortable, jostling carriage ride that Emma suspected, if they'd really been back in The Enchanted Forest with no curses and Land Without Magic, she would have been forbidden to ride in due to her delicate condition. Probably, she wouldn't have even attended a ball, stuck to her castle apartments in "confinement". So, at least there was that deference to progress.

Literal fairy lights were strung up on the trees of the large driveway and the lights by the front door had been replaced by torches. Doc, wearing the same livery as the other Dwarfs helped them out and Happy drove the truck-turned-carriage away, the white horses no doubt soon happy themselves back in Jefferson's nearby stable, warmer and eating oats and hay until they were up in the rotation again.

At least there was no red carpet.. .though there was a small crowd loitering around and Emma thought she recognized one of the _Good Morning Storybrooke_ reporters trying to conceal a cellphone.

The layout of the mansions' interior hadn't been changed much, so it was a short walk through the unnecessarily large foyer to the double doors that once held back a creepy people-vacuuming hat.

Leroy opened the doors, the string music inside quieted, and he announced, "Her Majesty Queen Snow White. His Royal Highness Prince Charming. And Her Royal Highness Emma Swan."

"Here goes everything," Emma muttered before stepping through.

* * *

Two hours into the ball and Emma really couldn't see the appeal. The first hour was spent greeting people the way Anna had been introduced to her father and Abigial. There was bowing and curtsying and relating titles and kingdoms of origin. Some of the people Emma knew, of course, including Abigail, but many others from small kingdoms and principalities she did not.

She couldn't drink the champagne and the food was all weird stuff like pickled duck tongue and smelly pates in aspic, none of the street meat kind of Enchanted Forest cuisine that she didn't mind and even sometimes craved. There was, at least, no chimera, but a pregnant woman could hardly subsist on sparkling water and mini toast squares.

And so Emma wasn't in a particularly good mood when the guests of honor finally arrived fashionably late, Aurora dressed in pink and looking barely legal.

Emma forced a smile as they went through the whole polite greeting ritual and then introductions to other guests so they could all participate in small talk. Most was about the 'good old days' back in The Enchanted Forest and future plans to return and take back their lands from Ogres and warlords so their children wouldn't have to grow up in exile in a strange, foreign land with frightening technology and off-putting customs. Emma had to bite the inside of her cheek not to blurt out, "You mean like premarital bestiality lesbian sex with a half-octopus sea goddess?"

Instead, she excused herself to the bathroom. A _real_ bathroom that was upstairs and off the library where the wardrobe was housed, because no way was she using a chamber pot.

It took forever to mess with her skirts, but not as long as she could probably get away with being gone, so with her shoes off Emma went in search of an unoccupied bedroom and flopped back on the mattress, hissing as she did, "Fucking hairpins!"

"Not very princess-like language," Neal chuffed from the corner and Emma startled upright.

"Christ, Neal! What are you doing here!?" Emma gasped out, noting that he was wearing the same clothes as the Dwarfs and other servants, which she instantly found insulting.

"Originally? Keeping Tink sober to her spellwork," Neal answered. "I got a break after the last arrival. Needed some peace and quiet. Was thinking about getting a sandwich from the kitchen."

"Oh my god! There are sandwiches!?" Emma gasped, scrambling off the bed. "Take me to the sandwiches, Neal! I command you as your princess!"

"Technically, no one is my princess. The Frontlands are an unincorporated-"

"Less talking, more walking in the direction of sandwiches!" Emma shoved him toward the door.

Neal grinned. "Yes, Your Highness. You look lovely, by the way."

"Shut up. I'm sure Henry sent you pictures already. I know my father wasn't the only one sneaking them."

"If you mean of your mom doing your hair, you have the cutest scowl and stink-eye look," Neal laughed and turned left. "Servants stairs to the basement kitchen. Got all the froo-froo stuff for the party, but regular food for the staff. Such as regular is, anyway."

Much more pleasant smells than weird pate and cheese wafted up the stairs once they reached the ground floor and then into the kitchens which, unlike the first floor, hadn't been un-renovated back to Enchanted Forest times. All the old-timey food was being prepared on modern appliances by people in modern, hygienic clothing with clean utensils and refrigerated ingredients.

"I wondered how long it would take you to find your way down here," Granny tutted, platting something fancy while the Magical Meats guy was slicing livers. "Sandwiches are in the fridge over there."

Emma found a salami and not-stinky-cheese sandwich and took a seat in the corner while staff from the town's restaurants all worked together to keep the hundreds of guests happy. She savored her first bite. "This is _so_ much better than that shit being served upstairs. No offense!"

"You couldn't pay me to eat this stuff," one of the souse chefs said of the fishy-smelling pudding he was making. "Give me some deep fried clams."

"I'm just relieved," another cook said, "that in deference to your last name there's no roast swan on the menu. It's a pain the ass to make. And who wants to kill a swan? You kill one, you really have to just kill two and put the other one out of its brokenhearted misery. Then the whole keeping the exterior of the carcass intact so it still looks alive when served. Ugh. Royalty.

"No offense," the woman amended quickly.

"None taken," Emma sighed. "Being royalty is a pain in the ass. I get treated like I'm looking down on everyone just because of who my parents are by the not-royalty while the royalty who were raised royal look down on me because I was raised like a peasant and thought I was this world's version of one. I can't win."

"Who says it's a contest, dear?" Granny countered. "Just be yourself."

" _This_ ," Emma fluttered her skirts, "is not myself."

"Appearances don't make a person. I was always myself whether in human or wolf form. It was in choosing not to maul people or shoot them full of arrows when in a mood that made me myself. The better version, anyway. So go be the better version of you that isn't standing around nodding daintily and talking about needlepoint or moping in my kitchen getting crumbs all over that nice dress. At _least_ get a dance in, dear."

"But I don't wanna go back upstairs," Emma pouted.

"It can't be _that_ bad, Em," Neal insisted. "It's a few more hours. Play nice with Aurora and Philip and overt a war."

"Or waste time while George and Tremaine are using this as a distraction to do something shady so it's all useless political theater that's going to leave me with bunions and from that stinky cheese I ate, probably gas and heartburn or worse."

"Well, I'm not going to have you farting in my kitchen," Granny quipped. "Go stink up that ballroom."

"You're a crass, cranky old woman, Granny," Neal complimented with a smile.

"And proud of it! Get your baby mama out of here before her parents come looking and I get blamed for feeding her nontraditional food."

" _Don't_ call me that," Emma huffed. "Just because it's what Ruby would say doesn't mean you should. You're old. It's weird."

"You're weird," Granny shot back. "Go dance."

Groaning, Emma finished her sandwich and let Neal help her up and past the coming and going wait staff crowding the stairs. On the first floor there was a patio with French doors left partially open, cool air spilling in... with...

"Is that...?" Emma sniffed.

Neal opened the door and Tinkerbell quickly stomped out the joint she'd been smoking and used her wand to spray magical air freshener.

"You did _not_ smell that!" Tink insisted.

"Tink, you've been off duty for like twenty minutes!" Neal groaned.

"After two hours of that shit! I have anxiety to medicate."

"Since when do you have anxiety?" asked Emma and Tink gave her a sour look.

"Since _when_? Regina unfriended me, I lost my job, I got trapped on a demonic island with Tiger Lily, the biggest self-important bitch after Blue who never let me forget that she was on a very special assignment and taking her duties and sacrifice to spy on Malcolm very seriously while I was a reckless loser. I got stoned on pixie dust and had sex with Hook. I got stoned on pixie dust and had sex with-"

"Please don't go down that road, Tink," Neal cut her off with a wince.

"I was gonna say my own shadow after cutting it off, which was very meta weird but not actually in a bad way," Tink remarked. "I only ever gave you a handjob and taught you oral that I learned from the mermaids before setting you up with that least human eating in a bad way one on the high tide thing to pop your cherry."

Emma choked and turned toward Neal. "You lost your virginity to a mermaid?"

"Erm... can we not talk about it?" Neal groaned. "It was a weird and uncomfortable experience. I was fifteen, horny and confused and pretty fucked up by Pan and Felix already. Tink thought she was doing me a favor. Maybe she was. I dunno. But I'm pretty sure mermaids, only turning human down there once a year, don't understand how human sex works."

"I didn't know she would try to drown you," Tink insisted. "I just thought she would be more comfortable with the siutation doing it in the tide pool and she seemed genuinely curious, but obviously not curious or stupid enough to proposition a pirate after Hook raped her sister or one of the Lost Boys after what they did to the mermaid that fell in love with Rufio."

"Jesus, Neverland was fucked up," Emma shook her head and wondered, "Does _anyone_ from The Enchanted Forest have a healthy sexual origin story? My mother was diddled by Hercules when she was like fourteen. King George had my way-too-old-to-still-be-a-virgin father 'tutored' by whores. Granny got raped by a werewolf."

"Nope, everyone gets molested," said Tink. "The gods are really into that shit. I mean, that first goddess that got put under a sleeping curse got gang raped by some gods and when she woke up was like 'I'm da bumb cuz all these dudes wanted to fuck me while I unconscious. That means I'm the hottest piece of ass on Mt. Olympus.'" She rolled her eyes. "We've all gotten treated to very warped ideas about sexuality and romantic relationships because of their kinky rape fantasy shit and then applied that to our own and the dumb advice we've given others, like my trying to get Regina over Daniel by getting her under Robin Hood instead of advising her to just find her own personal happiness which was probably Maleficent, but the gods were only into that for the porn factor, not a committed relationship that doesn't include dicks. Unless it's a committed relationship between dicks, which was also frowned upon. Just sword-crossing orgy type relationships. Gotta keep the gay sex on the downlow and keep raping those milkmaids to make half-horse babies and whatever. Bunch of toga-wearing freaks.

"Though, to be fair," she concluded, "what's with this world and romantic comedies only having three plots? She _married her boss, stalking is romantic_ , and _I hate you and then I love you_? That's just as bad as the dumb fairytale clichés we all got trapped in. And you claim your culture is more female empowered and whatever, but your best selling work of literature is about a young woman who agrees to let some older rich sadist guy put her on a leash cause he looks hot and is rich? Not much different, girlfriend. Your modern fairytales are just as dumb as the originals."

Emma crossed her arms and conceded, "Yes, well, maybe, but by the end of the book he's traded his butt plug for a heated toilet seat, so I suppose the point is that she did get him to change, which is what women want, but is also a bad message because in real life men don't usually change from sadists to not sadists but idiots like my sister will trust anything in print as confirming what they want to be true. And getting tied up for sex is overrated."

Neal raised an eyebrow at her as did Tinkerbell. She rolled her eyes and answered, "It was a honeytrap for some skip. He was into callgirls and handcuffs and I'm good at getting out of handcuffs and putting them on perps instead. I was tempted to strip him naked and leave him cuffed to the bed, but I really needed the bounty to pay rent on that stupid expensive apartment I signed for during a really bad hangover that has Anna written all over it. I'm like thirty percent sure I did stuff in my 'sleep' that was actually her in control but she wouldn't fess up to it when I asked."

"Yeah, I do stuff in my sleep and can't get myself to admit to it too," nodded Tink as though what she made perfect sense. She pulled out another joint.

Emma glared at her.

"Oh, right, you're knocked up with a hopefully not half-horse baby," Tink recalled, extinguishing her wand flame. "Official congrats on the little bastard."

"Tink!" Neal snapped.

"What? It's accurate. You're not married. More power to you guys. Stick it to the man and all that with their traditions that essentially reduce all women to their reproductive organs. It's more important than class and wealth, really. So congrats on yours still working. That's something to celebrate after a, what, fifteen year hiatus, even if the unwed thing is socially unacceptable.

"Do you think I should marry Dopey just to further stick it to Blue?" Tink asked suddenly. "I thought for sure Nova would have finally been completely deprogrammed and knocked up with a half-Dwarf baby by now to really make her flip her lid," she moped, munching on her brownie, "but Astrid and Leroy are hot and cold. It's exhausting.

"Hey, Ems, do you have any Mountain Dew or Red Balls? It'd go great with my Funyons," she said, digging her bag.

"No, Tink. I am not keeping cans of over-caffeinated soda in my ballgown," Emma replied. "And I think you mean Red _Bull_."

"No, I mean Red Balls. It's basically crack in a can. Or it's literally crack in a can? Some dude with a white mustache, if you know what I mean, sells cases of it down at the docks," she explained, then asked, "What about Slim Jims? No wait, I only came out here cause that smelly-ass cheese made me have to fart like a horse after a can of Beef-O-Reno so that'd only make it worse.

"Did you know I can read minds but when I do I fart?" she asked and looked intensely at Emma declared, "You hate balls!" and let one rip.

"Okay, you are done having access to drugs, magic, and whatever else is in your bag," Emma told her, taking her wand and her purse.

"Boooo! You're no fun!" Tink hissed. "You'd better be nice to my wand! Don't go stirring any soup with it and telling Granny it was me, or I'll cut you, beotch!"

"That turned angry fast," Emma muttered and told the ex-fairy, "Don't worry, _Thumbellina_ , I'm not going to frame you for soup-related damages."

Tink was suddenly distracted by something in the sky. "Ooooo! A shooting star!"

It was an airplane, but that was a good opportunity for Emma and Neal to sneak back inside.

"I think Tink needs an intervention," sighed Emma. "Why did my parents hire her for this?"

"Their only other fairy option was Astrid?" Neal shrugged and amended, "She probably shouldn't be allowed to carry a wand at all, though. Granny makes her check it since the magic mushroom soup incident."

Emma snorted at that. The ex-fairy, who'd been living at the Inn since leaving Blue's service, had tried to make soup with some old Wonderland mushrooms using a hot plate in her room... presumably after already sampling some of the 'shrooms which gave her that bright idea. The pot had exploded and she'd miniaturized herself and the furniture for a week... not to mention shorted out the wiring, blacked out both the Inn and the Diner, and the town's volunteer fire department had to bash a hole in the wall of her room to put out the electrical fire. Needless to say, it was surprising that Granny hadn't kicked her out.

Digging through Tink's clearly bottomless charmed purse, she found a quite large bag of weed and what looked like a _lot_ of ecstasy pills but pink with little roses stamped into them. "Damn it, Tink isn't just a junkie, she's a drug dealer! She's the one making 'Mist'! She probably wasn't even making stoned and stupid soup, she was cooking drugs to sell! Why the hell did anyone trust her to help collect Arthur's seed stash?"

Shrugging, Neal offered, "Because your sister and brother-in-law are idiots who got stoned on the stuff in Camelot?"

"True." Emma rubbed her forehead. "Granny better not have known what she was doing and turned her Inn into a front for a drug lab!"

"I'm sure she has no idea," Neal reassured. "No one thinks Tink is that smart."

"Also true," sighed Emma, adding, "Well, at least this ball accomplished getting some hallucinogenic drugs off the streets. And I got a sandwich. An hour and a half more of this-" she tugged at the sides of her dress "and I can get out of this thing and into a nice warm bath and then sleep through tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan," Neal agreed as they reached the atrium and Emma smiled at him.

"You know what...?" She pointed the wand at Neal who gave her a mildly leery look. Clearing her throat she set an image in her head and encanted, "Bipity bopity baby daddy!"

In a poof of purple sparkles Neal's livery uniform became a dark blue suit with a silver cape. Emma pumped her first. "I did it!"

Neal told Emma, "I appreciate the upgrade, Em, but it's not really practical for-"

"For what? You kept Tink from toking until she was off the clock. That means you're off the lock," said Emma, tucking the wand back in Tink's purse. "Who am I going to dance with? Leroy? My dad?"

"But I'm not supposed to-"

"I don't give a fuck," Emma cut him off. "I can only play along with this so far, Neal. And I'm sorry if Aurora or Philip or their noble flunkies have a problem with me not pretending I'm a thirty-three year old virgin who stuffed a pumpkin under her ballgown and doesn't have a teenage son babysitting his own uncle and a lover who was born before almost everyone in town to the shitty wife of the pre-Dark One before getting sucked down a portal and carried off by a demonic shadow to some out-of-time realm where I later had a very bad camping trip. Everyone knows it even if we don't slut it up in public like my sister and Hook. And if everyone pretended to be okay with that, then they will pretend they are okay with us dancing at a boring diplomatic ball to boring diplomatic music."

"I can't say 'no', can I?"

"Not if you want to slut it up later at home," Emma replied. "And I mean regular world, not like self-hating missionary position stuff that Aurora and Philip probably do so she has to compensate by writing smut _or_ any of that _Fifty Shades_ fuckery."

"Yeah, Pan's brand of bondage kinda put me off that for good. Is it weird that I kinda liked the tentacle porn one though?" Neal asked. "Like, latent trauma from the mermaid drowning thing?"

"No, everyone likes the tentacle porn one," Emma waved him off. "It was colorfully descriptive as well as informative about the long mistrust between mermaids and humans because of the opposing sides Ursula and Calypso took in the Atlantian War."

"So, you got a better history lesson from Aurora's smut novel than your mother?" Neal deduced.

"Basically. So don't take it personally if I do some experimenting with the shower massage."

They reached the atrium outside the ballroom a minute later. Leroy, who was slouching in a chair like a mall security guard straightened up and sniffed.

"You ate _real_ food!" he accused.

Neal pulled a still-intact sandwich out of his relocated pocket. "It's a bit smooshed. Emma altered my clothes."

"As long as she didn't turn the salami into duck tongue," Leroy remarked, then told Neal, "You clean up nice even when it's not for your funeral, brother." He toasted Emma with the sandwich. "Work those magic skills, Princess."

"I used a fairy wand, but thanks for the vote of confidence, Leroy," Emma told him.

"Do you still have it? Can you turn this chair into a barcalounger?"

"I don't think my parents would approve. Kind of ruins the whole vibe they've got going."

"Yeah, pretty sure bringing your man mistress to the ball ain't on the agenda either, sister."

"Man mistress?" Neal croaked.

"Not royally sanctioned consort," Leroy clarified.

"Yeah, I got that. It's worse than 'baby daddy'. Thanks, man. I brought you a sandwich."

"No mustard."

Neal rolled his eyes and Leroy told Emma, "If your mother asks if I let Prince _Consort_ Neal in, I was taking a piss break and didn't see anything."

The small orchestra was still playing as they slipped inside, and thankfully the music's tempo had also slowed, because Emma really didn't think she could do those hippity-hoppity waltzes in her heals.

"I guess we're doing this," Neal groaned a little, offering his hand which Emma took with a grin.

"Just be warned my center of gravity isn't what it used to be and I've only had a week of lessons with my dad. My sister got all the rhythm."

"I think I can manage."

After stuffing Tink's drug-filled purse in a potted plant by the refreshment table, they joined the others on the dance floor and for a few moments it was actually nice, swaying to the music, hands clasped, gazing deeply into each other's eyes...

Perhaps balls weren't entirely a bad thing.

But then the song came abruptly to an end and all eyes turned in their direction... or general direction, Emma realized as even her parents were looking past her toward the doors where Regina stood in a fancy purple gown... flanked by armor-wearing men with swords.

" _Regina_?" Snow's confused question cut through the silence.

"You really are dumb, aren't you?" the impostor returned, canceling her glamor and revealing, of course, Lady Tremaine.

Emma sighed to herself. _Nope. Balls are definitely a bad thing_.

David drew his sword. "Whatever you're trying here, you won't win."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Tremaine hissed and waved her manicured hand. A large mirror on one of the walls shimmered and revealed the farmhouse where Henry and Emma's brother were tied up.

Neal tensed and Emma threatened, "Your goons hurt them and you're dead!"

Tremaine laughed. "Aren't you adorable. No matter how many balls your parents throw to pass you off as their rightful heir, the other kingdoms will never stand for you as a potential queen or your illegitimate offspring. Keeping treaties and alliances matters more than trying to belatedly give back your birthright. Now..."

She turned to Snow and David, asking, "Little Prince Neal, how much is his continued existence worth, Your Majesties?"

"You'll just kill him," Snow surmised, "no matter what we do."

"And why would I do that?" she shrugged. "Yours isn't the kingdom I want. And I certainly," she scoffed at Philip and Aurora, "have no need for your land or your people, in either world. But I do appreciate you giving sanctuary to all the people I do need, cast out of their kingdoms, in need of a new home. Or perhaps I'll just take control of my old one..."

She snapped her fingers and the mirror image switched to King Herman's home where he and his grandchildren were tied up.

Prince Thomas stepped forward and stated coolly, "If you think my father will ever concede to your demands-"

"I'm quite sure he won't," she shrugged, "but I just wanted to tie him up and gag him... for old time's sake. Of course, back then, I think he enjoyed it a bit more..."

"You're even crazier than your sister!" Ella accused.

"And you, sweet thing," Tremaine sniggered, "are nothing more than a convenient uterus to your father-in-law. The man organized a ball to find his son a wife. Exactly why Thomas here had such a hard time of it, I can only assume has something to do with his peculiar foot fetish. I suppose all those princesses didn't have enough bunions and blisters. But to each their own. Prince James certainly had some kinky interests, from what I understand... while Prince David here is quite vanilla in comparison. You wouldn't believe all the things George had to get him tutors for. So, I suppose," she smirked at Snow, "you really ought to be grateful for his dedication to an authentic con job or your dear Prince Charming might never have known where to sheath his sword."

"All right," Emma cut the woman off, "you fairytale people need to get some new penis euphemisms. And you, lady, are not going to sit your ass on any thrones. I'm sorry King Herman told you that your uterus sucks, but your sister's kids aren't exactly all that and from what I heard, your cheesy duplicate Enchanted Forest self who got to marry Ella's deadbeat dad popped out a pretty shitty kid, so the world's probably not hurting from your having shriveled up ovaries. Though they make a good match for George's shriveled balls, I'm sure.

"Only question is," she considered, "are you going to chop his off before he removes your head? Because two ambitious assholes like yourselves can't possibly reach an amicable end to this plot of yours."

"You think because we're villains, we can't work together?" Tremaine scoffed.

"No, I think because you're a sad, unimaginative cliché out of my kid's old book, you can't work together," Emma retorted. "Because a _smart_ villain could have gotten off scott free. If you'd just kept it to settling your Old World score with your apparently less psycho evil sister instead of this whole confusing mess with using a squished goat to fake your death so you could seduce an old creep into teaming up in a ridiculously ill-conceived coupe attempt then my sister would have shrugged it off and made you wear an ugly orange jump suit and laughed at you like a school yard bully while you did community service for a week. You'd have been free to seduce whatever old rich guy you wanted. Probably could have even slipped your ex something to give the guy a heart attack and made your woman scorned revenge complete.

"Instead, you chose to keep going with the drawn-out, over-the-top, one-dimensional villain trope route."

Tremaine snarled and launched a magical attack at the same Emma did, both women stumbling back. The weapon-wielding Camelot knights charged into the crowd, seeking, it seemed particular targets that included Prince Charming and Snow White.

"I just wanted a ball!" Snow bemoaned as David stabbed a guy through the shoulder before she smacked him in the face with a crystal punch bowl, knocking him down.

Neal, much as his instincts were to protect Emma, had learned by now that it would either get him killed or the two of them transported elsewhere and thus a lot more innocent people killed without Emma's skills. She might suck at spells, but raw magic in desperate situations to protect the people she cared about, there was no match for Emma's might. And maybe she didn't care for many of the people here and had a beef with her parents still and conflicted feelings about her baby brother, but Neal knew she'd do anything to make sure his namesake and their son got out of her parents' house alive - which meant them getting out of this situation alive.

Which meant a better defense than the magicked sword that he was pretty sure used to be his cellphone as it sparked while breaking in half to the blade of a battle ax, the sharp end spinning its way into the chocolate fondue fountain that he hadn't even gotten to sample yet.

But that did give Neal an idea. Fondue was a bit like soup.

Pivoting around, Neal weaved and dodged his way through the fray to the potted fern. People were screaming and shouting and trying to get out through the French doors on the far side of the ballroom that were kept closed with the cold weather, so it wasn't easy.

He got knocked down several times before retrieving the purse and then crawled his way behind the overturned refreshment table where some people had taken cover.

"We're surrounded!" gasped a Abigail as the French doors finally opened, only to let in more armed henchmen, and unlike the Camelot knights who'd targeted the men, looking for some sort of quasi-honorable swordfight to decide the victors, these mercenaries and thugs had maces and crossbows, swinging the chain implements to send people back screaming and shooting indiscriminately at whatever people were not in engaged in battle with the knights.

As several women in fancy gowns went down from arrow wounds, Aurora exclaimed, "This is barbaric!"

"You're surprised that bitch would go _Red Wedding_ on us?" Abigail snorted as Neal moved past them to the large chocolate fountain still standing at the far end of the table. "You gave sanctuary to these brutes who clearly mean to slaughter us!"

Neal tossed in the two ziplock bags, waited a few beats, and then dropped the wand in after.

For a few seconds there was no reaction and Neal figured it had been a futile idea, but then the chocolate began to bubble, turn pink like Pepobismol and give off a very weird mixed aroma of roses, chives, and skunk.

Aurora sniffed and gave him a peculiar look, "What is that awful-"

The bubbles and fumes turned to rumbling and smoke.

"SOUP!" Neal shouted, not sure if anyone could hear him and then shoved the two women down just before-

 _BOOM_

It was like a bomb went off. A weird pink chocolate weed bomb. Pink goo went everywhere - or almost. Emma ducked away from Tremaine's attack and directed her magic, swirling it around the ball-goers while their attackers got splattered. Tremaine managed to protect herself, but as the fumes cleared her henchman all stood momentarily bleery-eyed... and then either found their nearest compatriot and began making out or attacked the refreshment table to gorge themselves.

The witch growled in anger and poofed herself away as her followers embarked on a drug-induced orgy of sex and food. Everyone else backed away and hurried out into the garden... apart from the injured and their loved ones, anyway. Emma managed to heal the wounded party-goers but Belle pulled her away from a bleeding henchman.

"You'll overtax yourself," she warned. "And they knew what they were signing up for. Save your strength for whatever Plan B that crazy woman has."

"I suppose it's too much to hope she didn't make one," sighed Snow as they all moved toward the atrium.

"Make love, not war, eh?" Leroy joked while massaging a bump on his head. "How'd you manage that?"

"Thank Tinkerbell for keeping a drug stash in her handbag," Neal told him, "and Emma for confiscating it."

"Ah, the soup incident," Leroy snorted. "Too bad she didn't have more of those 'shrooms. It'd be a hell of a lot easier dealing with toy soldiers than horny regular sized ones."

"The kids," said Snow. "We have to get them back."

"And find Tremaine," added Emma. " _And_ Regina. She must have used her to get in, so she should be tied up around here somewhere."

"I can't believe that woman's audacity," Thomas growled and Ella rolled her eyes.

"Really? You met my stepmother whose claim to fame was seducing my father. How are you surprised her sister is a homicidal nutjob who can't get over your father's rejection?"

"Fair point," he sighed.

"If comes down to me, her, and a shotgun," Ella growled. "This time, no one stop me. Tying up my kids and holding them at swordpoint is my red line."

"This is certainly a bad turn of events," Philip said, joining them with Aurora. "Our kingdom has clearly been infiltrated by mercenaries and thugs. I doubt it's safe for us to return. We must get to our children and protect any of our people that this woman and her ally are using or threatening."

"I doubt it's safe to just walk back in though," returned Belle, joining them. "I'll get Rumple to do some recon and see if there's an easier way to get them out unnoticed."

"Take Jefferson," Emma suggested. "He's got maps of the town. And is probably one of the only people Gold can work with."

"All right," David stated, "Belle, you handle figuring out what parts of town they've infiltrated and where George might be. I'll take Thomas, Philip, Frederick and Neal with the Dwarfs. We'll figure out a plan to get the kids and King Herman. Snow, Emma, you and the other ladies tie up their henchman here before they snap out of it and go back to trying to kill us. And find Regina, see if she has any idea where Tremaine might have retreated to and what she's got planned. _And_ how she got through all the wards in the first place."

* * *

"So, Regina," Ella asked after Emma had tied up all the henchman and they'd collected their weapons and piled them up in the garden, "how do we locate her?"

"I think I already have," answered Snow, pointing toward the back of the garden where a golden glow was emanating from a gazebo.

They all hurried through the garden and found Regina gagged and secured with some glowing rope to one of the posts. Snow removed the gag and Regina grunted out, "Get me out of this damned thing! I'm freezing my ass off!"

Snow tried to untie the knot with no luck and Emma tried magic to force it apart. She then vanished the posts, but instead of remaining slack, the ropes instantly tightened to keep the former Evil Queen bound.

"Okay," Emma admitted, "I think we might need Gold here."

"Or gold of a different sort," interjected Abigail. "I think that's a Gordian Knot. The Dark One used it as a test on my fifth great grandfather in a deal. He believed he outwitted the test when he found a way to untie it without handing over his first born. Instead the price was just passed down to my father."

"His curse," Snow deduced. "Wealth with the touch of a finger, but unable to touch anyone because of it."

"My father tried to find it, believing that it might be the key to ending his curse," Abigail explained. "I don't know if it is, but he may be able to untie it... if he remembers how. His mind has started going since we last returned. Caring for him is really the only reason that Frederick and I have not taken any trips back to The Enchanted Forest."

"Why would you want to?" Emma asked.

"I'm sure our old world," Rumplestiltskin announced himself, "has some positives. Now, I understand you're in need of King Midas' touch?"

He snapped his fingers and the bearded man appeared.

"A-Abigail?" the former king croaked out, confused. "What's happening? Am I late for your engagement ball?"

Abigail sighed. "No, Papa. That was many years ago. I just need you to try to untie something for me. Can you do that?"

Midas, who often didn't remember his real name, or even his fake one, nodded and tried to pull at the knot at Regina's back. His hands glowed, but it wouldn't budge.

"Hmm," Rumplestiltskin nodded, "I suspected as much. Like my own, his curse is different here. Our world's magic and this one's will never quite have a harmonious marriage, and it's particularly noticeable with old and powerful spells. Lucky for you, dearie," he told Regina, "we have a portal."

With wave of his hand they were all standing in front of the wardrobe. Belle was already in the library with Jefferson and startled at their appearance.

"It seems," Rumplestiltskin explained, "that Midas' touch isn't as effective in this world. Regina will be needing a quick trip abroad."

"I've located the right maps," Jefferson spoke up from the table where he'd been laying out his rolls. "This one is the mine system, this one has the trail heads, and this is a topographical one of the outlying areas where they've got their compound. Once we map the wards around the place, we should be able to find a way to slip in unnoticed."

"Will you," Emma asked Gold, "be able to tell if Tremaine and George are there?"

"It depend on the wards and anything else she might have done to conceal their whereabouts," answered Rumplestiltskin.

"I'm certain," Belle considered, "that Tremaine got cut during the fight. There might be some broken glasses with her blood that we could use. She probably used Regina's blood to get through the wards here and impersonate her."

"Great," Emma nodded. "You and Ella find that. Gold, you and Jefferson go do recon. Aurora-"

"I'm coming with you," the princess cut her off. "I've not been home in years. I want to at least smell the air for a few minutes."

"Fine," Emma shrugged, not really having anything better for the naive princess to do and her mother just shrugged as well.

After Gold and Jefferson had poofed away and Ella and Belle went on foot, Emma walked up to the wardrobe.

"So... how does this...?"

"It's still savior tears," Regina told her. "So hurry up and think of dead puppies and kittens."

* * *

With additional weapons taken from the tied-up knights and assorted thugs, David had organized two strike teams on the Town Commons, most consisting of guests or security from the ball, but with a few additional volunteers

"All right," David addressed the assembled men, "here's the plan, one more time. Thomas here is in charge of the team infiltrating his father's home on Mifflin Street. Thomas, you'll take the Dwarfs into the tunnel system through the red-tagged house on Anna's old lot and use Jefferson's map and Mr. K's property grid map to get into position beneath the house.

"At the same time, I'll lead the second team to the farm where we'll meet up with some additional volunteers who're scoping out the situation. Once we take out the exterior guards there, Grumpy will blow a hole into the basement and we'll strike simultaneously.

"While I'd like to take prisoners to get as much information as possible, the safety of the hostages is the most important thing, so if you need to take any of these henchman out, do it. Any questions?"

"Are you sure?" Thomas asked, "that my father's house won't end up red-tagged after this?"

"No one does precision explosives mining like Dwarfs, brother," Grumpy told him with an insulted look.

"Let's head out then. Good luck, everyone!"

* * *

Aurora was the last through the portal, stumbling on her skirts and then smiling as she inhaled the fresh air of their birth world.

"I've missed the smell so much!"

Midas, meanwhile seemed to come to his senses, his eyes focusing before asking, "Abigail? Are we home?"

"Yes, Father," she nodded and pulled him into a hug. "You've been having a bad time with your memory."

"It feels as though I was lost in a dense fog that's been lifted."

"Maybe the dimensia is your curse adapting to the other world," Snow considered and Abigail looked distraught.

"We should have brought you back sooner!"

Midas looked distraught as well. "So... were you never able to find-?"

"No," Abigail shook her head. "Captain Nemo searched for us using both Rumplestiltskin's magic globe and a location potion, but just as it was with rescuing Frederick-"

"My curse prevents certain spells and potions from working as they ordinarily would," he grimaced. "She could have ended up on a shelf in some collector's trophy room or at the bottom of a lake."

"I'm sorry," Regina interrupted, "but I'm still tied up here!"

Midas finally turned toward the scowling mayor. "Oh, why that looks like my ancestor's cursed knot! I searched everywhere for it!"

"Well, Tremaine had it," Regina griped. "Maybe it ended up in The Land of Untold Stories. Either way, can you get me out of it? It keeps getting tighter and I'm already wearing this damned corset!"

"I believe so."

"Just, you know, don't touch me!"

Midas worked carefully and rather anticlimactically undid the knot. The rope fell to the ground, it's light winking out.

"How do we destroy it?" asked Snow.

"That I don't know," Midas admitted. "I've always suspected that if I found a way, it would end my curse. But apart from that..."

Emma handed him Tinkerbell's glittery handbag to stash it in and asked, "Right, so, we can head back now?"

"I'm staying," Midas declared. "I won't rest until my grandchild is found."

"I'm sorry, your _... you have a child_?" Snow gasped at Abigail.

"A daughter," she answered, "about a month old when you recast the Dark Curse. Just a few days before that we were betrayed by my cousin."

"My nephew," Midas explained. "Now my own age. He was abroad when the original Dark Curse struck and assumed control of our main palace when he returned. Being on an island, it was safer from attack, particularly the Ogres. He offered us refuge and my reinstatement as King but then betrayed us after my granddaughter was born. In the altercation, he threw the baby, knowing I would have to catch her - but she would be turned to gold. Then his men knocked me out. The babe was gone when I awoke and my nephew had fled. We searched as far as we could, but then we were swept up in the Curse."

"That traitor wasn't in Storybrooke, so I went right to Rumplestiltskin," Abigail sighed, "to see if she had ended up in his shop, but she hadn't. Frederick and I searched all over town, thinking perhaps she was there but uncursed. Blood magic found nothing, the same as this world. The gold blocks tracking spells, you see. And the gold itself is hard to track since it isn't ordinary gold. We'd hoped that my cousin might have escaped to The Land of Untold Stories when we learned about it and have been forcibly brought to Storybrooke by Zelena's over-amplified portal spell. We sought the help of the Sheriff's Department, but... Anna never made any headway on the case."

Emma rubbed her eyes, wishing she could transfigure her contacts into her glasses. "I vaguely remember that. You didn't mention anything about your daughter, just a nefarious cousin you wanted tracked down. I think Anna was more concerned with her personal pirate drama and my parents got dragged into Regina's double trouble mess and then the case just got thrown in the 'cold case' trash can with anything else Hook was tasked with re-filing that he didn't want to bother with."

"I see," Abigail frowned and shot Snow a sour look. "Your son-in-law is a real piece of work, Snow. I can't fathom how or why you supported, let alone encouraged your daughter to date _let alone marry_ that filthy loser of a pirate who relied on nepotism for employment which your husband also, apparently, supported despite all the regulations broken by hiring him," she concluded, another look cast toward Regina.

"Oh, don't drag me into this!" Regina huffed. "I _did_ object and told them all the legal violations of hiring that unqualified, lazy sonofabitch and the personal ones besides of him being married to the Sheriff and known to blindly distract her into just having sex all day and just being generally discourteous with depraved acts like making out at my dead lover's funeral. But they pulled the 'You ruined our lives and killed lots of people' card. If you want to punch anyone in the face for Hook's hiring, she'd be the one," she pointed to Snow.

"Yes, well, _you_ ," she reminded Abigial, "slept with my husband."

"We were cursed when that happened!"

"Ladies," said Midas, "while I do appreciate trying to get to the bottom of my nephew's whereabouts, we really shouldn't dawdled here. You have a potential war to overt. And I have a quest to embark upon."

"Wait," Aurora interjected, "what about the rope thing? Can you use it to track your cursed touch if it's related somehow?"

They all exchanged a look and shrugged. Regina sighed, "Well, it can't hurt, I suppose. You did free me and I suppose I won't be throwing down with Tremaine until Rumple has scouted the situation and recovered your were-monkey kids."

"That isn't their fault!"

"No, it's yours," Regina told her coolly. "The first thing you did in an Ogre-ravaged wasteland was get pregnant instead of using some herbal or magical contraception like sensible people. And then you trusted a crazy witch to keep her word and betrayed an alliance and endangered several kingdoms worth of people to essentially protect you, your husband, your unborn child, and an essentially abandoned kingdom since all of your people either fled the Ogres or were killed by my mother. And _then_ despite having one kid born with a tale, you _still_ called Whale a satanic witch doctor and refused to take his treatments to keep your next kid from also having a tale and instead trusted some crazy old woman who it now seems pretty clear had her heart controlled by Tremaine to lure you out to the middle of the woods for either some nefarious plot or just to leave you to die of childbirth complications."

Aurora was on the verge of tears. Snow frowned at her stepmother and stated, "You've more than made your point, Regina. Just cast the spell."

"Fine. Everyone take hold of... this hideously bedazzled purse."

Everyone did. Regina cast a spell. Midas' hands glowed. And with what felt very much like a _Harry Potter_ type portkey sensation, they were sucked out of their location and spat out... next to Lake Nostos?

"It must have been the near end of the world restoring it," Snow considered of the now good sized lake as they came upon golden items scattered around... including the sword David had used to kill that dragon and was supposed to hang in their castle.

"Well, it works," Midas observed, "but we're not looking for a sword. This is certainly progress, though. I shall set out at once while you return to-"

"Aurora!" Abigail exclaimed in surprise just before the princess dove into the water. "What the hell is she doing?"

"There must be a new siren," said Snow. "All the gold and the armor..."

"I've never heard of a male siren," Midas uttered.

"I don't think it's because the siren is male," Emma stated and the king had to think a moment.

"Oh! You know... I do recall some rumors about both of her parents..."

"More than rumors," snorted Regina. "Maleficent told me-"

"Oh, honestly! Are none of you going to save that poor, stupid girl!?" Snow huffed.

"I can't swim or I'd have gone in to save Frederick," shrugged Abigail.

"Old," said Midas.

"Pregnant," shrugged Emma.

"Don't want to," concluded Regina.

Snow demanded of her stepmother. "Well, do something about my dress then!"

Regina shrugged and completely vanished her dress, leaving her in her underwear.

"Regina!" she hissed, but seeing bubbles coming from the lake grabbed the golden-bladed sword and jumped in.

"Letting Aurora come was your idea," Abigail reminded Emma.

"Yeah, well, you didn't mention you had a missing gilded kid here. I thought we'd be in and out in a minute."

A minute later Snow surfaced with a stoned-looking Aurora and Emma used magic to pull them to the shore.

"Dress?"

Regina obliged while Aurora sputtered on the shore in her wet gown.

"Did you kill it?" Regina asked.

"I don't know.. I stabbed it in the-"

The siren burst back out of the water looking furious. "We were having a beautiful moment and you stabbed me in the tit, you bitch!"

"You were using your venom to make her hallucinate that you were some human she wanted to have that moment with," Snow argued, "so that you could rape and kill her. That's not how humans have beautiful moments."

"Well, other than my brother-in-law," said Emma.

"And my half-sister," amended Regina.

"Don't forget," Emma glared at her, "you raped and killed Graham."

"Are we _still_ on that? I was evil and addicted to dark magic and terrified of losing my happy ending and being thrown in a dungeon for eternity," Regina huffed. "What's your mother's excuse for sending your lover off to get whacked by my sister? Too busy getting pregnant again essentially six months after giving birth to you until that kid was in danger and she needed you to save it?"

"Don't you spin this back around on me, Regina!" Snow hissed. "You didn't help Neal either! And you're just as complicit in helping me cast the Dark Curse. You could have refused to split my heart."

"Not if I wanted things to be square between us," Regina shot back. "I bring your husband back from the dead, I no longer owe you for all the life-ruining I did. Sure, I suspected it meant your reason for casting the Curse would be completely undermined by not paying the price... but, to be fair, I didn't know Emma had a parasitic twin or that Zelena would actually succeed with her idiotic plan and destroy reality. I just figured I'd have to save the day as usual, and not get any credit as usual, and in the end there would be the reward of both you and Charming dying at the same time, so I wouldn't have to deal with one of you mourning the other. But you _still_ keep trying to guilt me into supporting your other idiotic ideas, like hiring Hook, because of the things I did. It's very unfair."

" _Seriously!?_ What you did to me is unfair! Why am I trying to be friends with you!?"

"Because you don't have any other friends! I've told you that! Your giggling smut book club doesn't count!"

"Damn, what's their deal?" asked the Siren.

Abigail explained while gesticulating between the women, "Her peasant mother was engaged to marry her future king father. But then _her_ princess mother had hers framed for jewel theft and publicly slut shamed in front of the future king while helping the serial rapist and the actual thief get away. So the prince broke off the engagement and exiled her mother who gave birth to a bastard child and left her in the woods."

The siren scoffed at Snow, arms crossed. "You should not be so judgey when your mother cavorted with rapists!"

"She also encouraged her other daughter marry one."

"Humans! Such hypocrites!" hissed the siren while Snow's scowl increased.

"So," Abigail continued, "shortly after _her_ mother married _her_ mother's ex-lover, the two ladies encountered each other again in the kingdom _her_ mother was exiled to which happened to be ruled by _her_ mother's cousin. Long story short, _her_ mother publicly humiliated hers _again_ and she ended up thrown in the tower for execution had she not gotten help escaping from Rumplestiltskin. But the price was high and the dark magic corrupted her so much it went beyond her heart to her soul and she ripped out her own heart before marrying _her_ father.

"Then, about ten years later - we all speculate on the gossipy reasons why it took _her_ mother so long to get knocked up - _she_ was born," she pointed to Snow. "By all accounts she was a real royal brat in contrast to her future nemesis here," she pointed to Regina, "who only started going evil after her mother used magic to cross their paths to con them both into arranging a marriage between her and _her_ father shortly after murdering her mother with the next part of the plan being to manipulate _her_ into killing her ex-lover, _her_ father, that doofus prince whose gullibility and distrust of women apparently started the whole mess.

"The plot," Abigail went on, "included _her_ mother killing her fiancé but framing _her_ for having spilled the secret engagement and thus focusing _her_ anger on _her_ rather than dear old mom. Which worked. The Evil Queen here killed her husband and tried to kill her stepdaughter who stated a war against her to regain control. _She_ eventually won with some magical help from Rumplestiltskin that neither of them knew was partially orchestrating the whole thing to get _her_ to cast his - but really his evil fake fairy mother's curse - that he augmented to take everyone to another world where he could find his son who was conveniently lost due to _help_ from the Blue Fairy who considered his mother her biggest nemesis.

"Anyway, nine months after the war ended," continued Abigail, " _she_ popped out this one here who had a parasitic Evil Twin that no one by Blue knew about it, so we all thought it was _her_ who married a disgusting pirate and criminally neglected her own teenage child and professional responsibilities the last couple of years. In retrospect, that all makes perfect sense now.

" _Her_ ," she pointed to Snow, "husband was impersonating his Evil Twin as 'Prince James' during the war, both of whom survived their blood curse, again because of some meddling by the Blue Fairy who tried but failed to kill Emma's twin before birth... though it all worked out in the end since her sister gaining physical control due to _her_ half-sister's half-witted revenge plot allowed Emma to outwit the savior demise clause... though she would have been killed by her twin's slutting it up and having kids with the pirate and no one would have known if Hera hadn't orchestrated some time travel and had some goddesses help fix the screwed up alternative timeline created when Emma's twin gained control and went back in time originally with her pirate sex doll and screwed up reality by having her parents meet at my engagement ball to _her_ father when I thought he was James instead of David instead of on our way to the ball, though ultimately I think it all turned out the same with the previous siren who occupied this lake being killed because she had bound the lake's restorative magic to herself and refused to part with even a cup of it so I could break the curse on my true love."

" _You_ killed my sister!?" the Siren growled.

"No, _her_ father and _her_ husband did," Abigail corrected, "before starting a war that got everyone cursed and relocated to another world without magic," and the glittery woman turned her cold look upon Snow again.

The Siren snorted. " _Again_. You? Judgey? It sounds like someone should have stabbed _you_ in the tits."

"It's Queen now," Snow corrected, trying to sound confident but wilted as she admitted, "I know. I made bad judgment calls. But _Reginai_ cast the Curse. She crushed her own father's heart to do it!"

Regina rolled her eyes. "And you crushed your own true love's heart to do it over again to find our reluctant savior here."

"Yes, well, _you_ named your homicidal rapist sister my grandson's godmother!"

"Better than your other daughter and her homicidal rapist husband!"

"That's enough!" the Siren shrieked. "I can't take anymore! Your family is deplorable! What will it take to be rid of you and have scum like you never return?"

"We're not-" Snow began.

"Find her kid," Regina interrupted. "She got gilded by the same curse as the sword Snow Not-So-Bright stabbed you in the boob with. Also, some extra water to cure the Flying Monkey Herpes epidemic in our town."

The Siren grimaced and related, "My mother seduced one of those humans. Horrible disease. Tragic that she took her own life before this magical lake with its healing waters was restored. Very well. Personally, I think children are atrocious creatures. But to each species their own, I suppose."

Retrieving the sword from the lake, the Siren sang some song over it and it glowed. Finally, tossing it to the sand, the Siren reported, "Some troll has her, thinks she's a doll or her spawn or something? I think the old broad has lost her gambling marbles. I overheard her sons lamenting how she went mad after their other brothers got turned into beetles and smooshed."

" _That_ was her fault!" Snow pointed to Regina.

"Technically," Emma countered, "in the original timeline it was _your_ fault, Mom. Although it was Dad who, when you think about it, needlessly smooshed them. Considering the whole blind date over a guy he killed, perhaps I should reconsider my curved grading scale of moral equivalency between the two versions of you guys."

Snow groaned. "Fine. Can we do that later, Emma? Let's just talk to these trolls so Abigail can get her child back and we can get back to stopping a war."

"Fine."

Regina poofed them all to the bridge where she had turned the trolls into beetles. She conjured ropes to bind Snow.

"What the-"

Two young male trolls showed up and Regina announced, "This woman is the reason your mother is insane and hoarding a very valuable baby-shaped idol heirloom that has sentimental value to us. We will trade you this troll-killer for the idol. She's small, but still has a good layer of fat in the ass for self-basting. And she's so vanilla that she's definitely free of any unsavory diseases."

One of the trolls grimaced. "You'd better not be tricking us and giving us an infected specimen. Our friend ate a Flying Monkey human. Now he has to be locked up every full moon. He throws his feces. It's very embarrassing."

"My sister really should be thrown back in a cell," Regina muttered, then insisted, "It's no trick. Princess Padonkadonk for the gold baby."

"Hey!" Snow growled, insulted, as the trolls went to get their mother's 'baby'.

"What? Trolls like big asses," Regina told her. "Everyone of any taste should. But mine has an evil witch to beat. These two skinny bitches are no help. And your daughter doesn't seem to have inherited your baby butt yet."

"You're just being a bitch on purpose, Regina!"

"Yes, I am! You insisted on throwing that stupid ball even though I warned you that your enemies would use it as an opportunity. At the very least, you should have used it as a trap! But you were so sure they wouldn't act as long as the travel ban was in place trapping them in Storybrooke! Maybe you should try listening to the former villain for once on villain psychology!"

One of the trolls returned and apologized, "My brother is doing his best. Mother is very attached to her doll. We've been trying for years to get her to give it up. We could buy a whole new bridge from Galdrack the Gargoil. He's the best bridge realtor in the province, you know. But even he couldn't convince her to part with it.

"We never should have taken it as payment and just eaten that uppity human and his friends," the troll sighed. "All of his stolen jewels and crowns weren't worth the emotional pain this statue has caused our family. Mother was getting better before he came along. We finally got her to part with that collection of golden phalluses."

"Where did you get golden dildos?" Emma asked, curious.

The troll shrugged. "Some thief who'd plundered King George's old castle after it was sacked by his estranged son during the war. I believe they belonged to Prince James. He had each one inscribed with the names of his mistresses. Presumably it's not that he wasn't well-endowed but so that he could double-dip and service his lovers while they were performing fallatio. There was a service manual. We might actually still have that if you-"

"No!" everyone shouted.

"Anyway, we traded them to a pirate who was looking to be a 'land pirate', whatever idiotic occupation that is, in exchange for some fascinating magical totem called a sell-fone. It didn't work for very long and seemed to mostly contain pornography and pictures of a woman changing clothes through a window. She actually looked a bit like you, now that I think about it."

Emma's eyes narrowed. "Do you still have that broken porno totem so I can beat the 'land pirate' over the head with it?"

The troll shrugged. "I think it's still being used to keep our table from wobbling. We can't even afford a new table, such is our sad financial state."

The other troll shouted in troll language.

"Mother is running," said the brother. "I was afraid of this. She's probably going to the gorge to threaten to jump and kill herself if we take away her baby. Squishing our other brothers really did mess her up beyond repair. I look forward to your rump roast," he told Snow.

Snow scowled as they hurried to the side of the bridge to see the female troll running along the river bottom carrying a rag-wrapped bundle.

"I got this!" Emma declared and reached out with magic, tugging and levitating the howling lady troll onto the bridge.

Her son insisted, "Mother, hand over the doll to the humans."

"NO! It's my baby! I won't let them take your brother!"

"Our brother is dead," the other troll sighed. "He was squished as a bug years ago with our half brother."

"That useless fool your father had with that skank and made me raise!" she huffed. "I threw him off the gorge! But Ragnarok is a good boy! He will grow up to be a great taker of human wealth and flesh!"

"Mother, you didn't throw anyone off the gorge. And Ragnarok is dead," the troll said, exasperated. "That doesn't even look like a troll baby! Look how ugly its face is!"

"Plus," the other brother groaned, "it's made of gold and wrapped in a blanket that's also made of gold. Which, you know, isn't normal for any species."

"NO! It's Ragnarok!" the lady troll wailed.

Exchanging an exasperated look, they bonked their mother over the head, knocking her out.

"Sorry, Mother, but it had to be done."

Midas grimaced and said to the trolls. "I'm sorry about your mother's condition. In a cursed land I suffered a similar mental condition. Many days I didn't remember my own daughter's name or thought it was many years ago. I took comfort in attachments to things that make no rational sense now that I have my right mind back."

"We thought about taking her to the Rock Trolls, creepy and unnatural Troll-Gargoil spawn as they are," said one, "and having her memories taken. But then she'd just be as mindless as a rock. It's a very frustrating situation. And it costs a fortune to get potions from the Gnome down the way just to keep her from wandering off and falling into the gorge. But she hates taking them. They make her nauseous. She's vomited up so many good, tasty humans we've prepared and the stolen riches used to buy her elixirs with it. It's all such a waste!"

"Yes, we're very sorry about your mother," Regina agreed. "She's clearly not right in the head. Speaking of," she gestured to Snow, "would it be too much to ask to let us keep her brain? She's had so many concussions that our healer wants to have a peak at it, see how much of her idiotic behavior can be chalked up to brain injury and how much to the hereditary stupidity from her father's side."

"I suppose we can agree to that," one troll brother said while Snow glared daggers at Regina.

They handed Abigail the 'doll' and Regina shoved Snow at the trolls.

"Regina!" Snow howled. "This isn't funny!"

Midas stepped forward, "I offer myself in her place."

"Father!" Abigial gasped.

"You?" snorted one of the trolls. "You're skin and bones. No trades."

"But I can offer you something better," said Midas, removing his glove and touching the bridge, instantly turning the block of granite to gold. "No more debts, collateral to purchase a bridge in a location teaming with bandits. mercenaries, and pirates. Also, that 'sell-phone' for Princess Emma here so she can use it to beat the pirate who killed her grandfather and seduced her morally questionable twin sister."

"That sounds like a complicated situation," commented one troll.

"Our sister is also a slut," said other. "We understand how hard that can be. Instead of helping with Mother and the family business all she does is fornicate with this loser Hordac who thinks he's all that because he inherited some fancy draw bridge from his older brother who used to bully us as kids. And he doesn't even operate the bridge, he get some dark fairy to make it work so he can just bang our sister all day and night. They had a litter last spring and they're all straight up brats. Family dinners are just intolerable now!"

"Tell me about it," sighed Snow. "Emma and her sister ransacked Regina's kitchen fighting at our last one."

"Can we move this along?" Regina reminded them all.

The troll brothers conferred in troll-ease and then shoved Snow back towards the group. "Deal."

" _Father_!' Abigail repeated.

With his gloved hand, he touched her face and looked at her sadly. "You know I can't go back to being afflicted as I was. I thought nothing was worse than my curse here, but there... I wasting away without my mind, like this poor troll. I had, what, a few more years of forgetting everything I ever knew and loved? Here I can help repair our world so that my granddaughter can return to a kingdom worth ruling."

Abigail cried and nodded and then watched her father assist the trolls in helping up their unconscious mother up. After one had fetched the cellphone that Hook had apparently stolen from someone had gotten someone to teach him how to use to take stalker pictures so he clearly later pretended to have no idea how to use a cellphone - Abigail said one last good-bye to her father and Regina poofed them back to the portal tree.

"Here goes nothing," Emma said, taking the helmet of Lake Nostos water from Snow and pouring some over the 'doll'. The gold melted away into a screaming infant.

"Great. Back into the fray. Let's just hope this water retains enough magic to keep Tremaine from recruiting the second generation of my sister's minions," said Regina, opening the portal.

* * *

The Charming farm was a bit more complicated than King Herman's residence. There were no tunnels, not to mention no trees around the house to use as cover and exposed as the house was and guards were posted at both the front and back doors. They'd had to park on an old logging road and make their way on foot through a small hollow of trees just beyond the property line and several hundred yards from the barn that, at least, did block the view from the house.

With no Emma or Regina to move clouds over the moon with magic, they had to wait for the wind to provide the darkness. An opportunity came not with cloud cover, however, but when the guy guarding the back door holstered his sword to unlace his pants and take a piss in the boxwood shrub by the stairs. David nodded to Anton beside him who gestured to his furry companion.

Sparkles might have been a rather tame dangerous magical creature, but the juvenile manticore had no love for humans that resembled poachers, such as the smelly, fur-coated, henchman with a belt studded in chimera teeth who was whistling while he pissed.

The poor sap probably didn't even have time to register what was happening, turning with his dick stilling hanging out just before Sparkles reached him, large feline feet slamming into his chest and knocking him down whereupon the manticore growled and jabbed a toxin-filled stinger into his throat.

David contacted Leroy as his own team swarmed the house and Anton called Sparkles off from mauling the guy.

They'd caused enough of a disturbance that another henchman opened the backdoor, but David was waiting and punched the guy in the face before he could raise the sword in his hand, sending him tumbling off the small porch where Philip was waiting to finish the job. In the kitchen, the other henchman jumped to his feet at the table, one raising his sword to the throat of the toddler strapped into a highchair.

Before the goon could complete the task, Snow's favorite boning knife ended up in the henchman's left eye instead. David didn't have time to comment on Neal's quick thinking or his knife-throwing skills and instead lunged forward, shoving the man's sword arm away so spare his son getting so much as a knick as the goon staggered and fell over, presumably dead.

Henry was quickly untied and tasked with removing his uncle from the house while David, Neal, and Philip met the rest of the goons in the hall between the livingroom and dining room. Barking from the small bathroom there gave away Whelby's location and as soon as the henchman were disarmed, knocked out, and dragged outside to join the exterior guards being tied up in the barn, David let the collie out and endured the dog's jumping, licking and whining in relief at his arrival.

With Whelby at his side, David returned to the back yard, reunited with his son who was petting Sparkles and didn't mind at all being licked by Whelby who ran ahead to greet the tot.

Neal finally noticed David's return and let out a shriek of "Daddy!" and ran to him. David scooped him up and hugged his son.

Neal likewise pulled Henry into a sideways embrace that the teenager tolerated, asking, "You okay, bud?"

Henry shrugged and responded, "Spending a couple of hours forced to watch a group of creeps try to cheat each other at dice and out belch and fart each other is pretty low on my trauma list. Mostly I was just worried the kid'd be traumatized," he nodded at his uncle, "but I'm pretty sure he thought it was some kind of game and those guys were way cooler babysitters than Granny after they let him have ice cream and stay up late. Plus, the belching and farting. They let him get in on that. I'm pretty sure he's slightly drunk."

Confirming this, little Neal let out a huge burp that smelled of ale.

"Wonderful," David groaned, despite his relief that his son didn't seem harmed by the ordeal, the morning was going to bring a barfing toddler. Probably, it was a good idea to take the toddler to the hospital just to make sure he hadn't had too much "fun" with his "babysitters".

"Can you teach me how to throw a knife like that?" Henry asked Neal, looking hopeful.

"Not until you're eighteen," Neal answered, receiving a groan.

Archie came over then, carrying coffee, offering cups to David, Neal, Anton, and a skeptical Philip while not to an annoyed Henry. The dark-haired prince-king happily handed the bitter-smelling stuff to the teen while the shrink reported from Granny that the first batch of prisoners were sleeping off their high, the group from King Herman's house was being taken to join them, and that according to Belle "The Ladies" had been delayed by a mission to get Regina out of some magical bindings that involved King Midas while Rumplestiltskin and Jefferson had retrieved Philip and Aurora's kids and reported that there was no unusual activity in the compound but that a location potion using Tremaine's blood had led them in the direction of the Wildlife Refuge where they had encountered wards that they were investigating carefully so as not to trip them.

His report was interrupted by a loud, wet, smelly fart from Prince Neal.

"Yikes! What do you feed him!?" Anton choked.

David groaned and held his son away from his body. "I really hope those training pants are as good as advertised, son. Come on, let's get you cleaned up and then have Dr. Whale give you a breathalyzer."

* * *

Thankfully, the training pants did hold and David got the increasingly sleepy toddler changed and returned to the livingroom where the original Neal was sweeping up glass from broken pictures that the thugs had knocked off of end tables and walls. It was a sad mess of the family memories that Snow had been meticulously adding to the space since they'd moved in and finally had the time to begin sorting through years of snapped pictures that hadn't been developed or printed out in the rush from one crisis to the next.

After setting his son on the couch with a blanket and his favorite stuffed lobster, David began carefully picking up the pictures, trying not to scratch the paper any more than it had been. Hopefully, most could be salvaged without having to reprint them. Some probably didn't have back-ups, like the one of "Mary Margaret" and Emma as roommates that once sat by their answering machine.

"Doesn't seem like we got the A-Team or even the B-Team," Neal remarked.

"Presumably Tremaine thinking she'd succeed at the ball," shrugged David, amending, "Fancy work with that knife. I didn't know you could do that."

"In Neverland you could only imagine up dinner if you were on of Pan's followers. I got tired of fish and rats after awhile and some of the so-called natives that Pan had trapped there taught me how to hunt wild boar," Neal explained. "I don't think Tiger Lily approved, but then I also didn't know she was really a fairy until Tink showed up and clued me in. We were both sort of misfits there. Seems I handled it all better mentally than she did," he considered. "But then, I wasn't raised in a cult either. I feel bad that she's having a hard time adjusting again to not being a fairy."

"Hopefully, Archie and Whale can help her," David considered. "You've been a good friend, but friends can only do so much. If she gets in a program and does community service under probation, I'm sure Abigail won't prosecute her for the drugs. Everyone understands that it's hard for those who lack modern skills and particularly the few ex-fairies who were even isolated from Enchanted Forest humanity."

"Too bad not everyone understands that modern skills aren't a bad thing to learn," Neal shook his head as he swept another pile into the dust pan, adding, "I think they used your umbrella holder as a urinal."

"Damn it!" David swore, then more calmly expounded, "Those in power are afraid to lose it. They see that we don't have the singular authority here the way we did back home. And those without power are afraid of being even more powerless in a world they don't understand after generations being stuck in one trade, never able to advance in any way without the help of some fairy godmother or making a shady deal with your father. This world has opportunities, ways to gain status and income that they just have no comparison for, no way to understand it. So they fear it. Snow's certain that if we'd been able to teach more of the children, their naturally curious minds would have changed their parents' views. Or many of them, at least. But Arthur, with his own agenda, capitalized on those fears and put an end to any kind of integration or assimilation quickly. Violet's father was one of very few who didn't listen to him and allowed her to attend school, I suppose because he came from this world originally."

"Yeah, assimilating's not always easy," Neal agreed. "Victorian London was a shock, but I'm glad I got sent there first or I don't know how I'd have managed this one. Doesn't seem our world advanced much technologically - or socially - from my days to yours, so it just has to be mind-blowing from these people, and most of 'em aren't naturally skilled at adapting to new places and things the way Robin was... and he still preferred staying in the forest."

"Well, hopefully when all of them see how Tremaine and George have been using them, playing on their fears for their own agenda, they'll be more receptive to becoming part of this town."

"Hopefully," nodded Neal while pouring the last pan-full into the trash bin. "I'll go dump this out. See if there's any updates from my pop."

As Neal headed back out, David set about rehanging the pictures he'd collected; Snow could properly fix them later when there was time to visit the art supply store - and she'd probably enjoy the task as he thought about it. They hadn't reorganized the photographs since discovering their daughter was actually _two daughters_ , just added some frames to the credenza in the dining room for Anna's last wedding and some shots of Emma since her "return" to the family. It would be a good opportunity - all things considered - to straighten out which ones were Emma and which were Anna and get them correctly labeled on the back and hung up in some sort of order that made more sense; perhaps Anna's on one side of the hallway and Emma's on the other... though there were a lot more of Anna, of course.

They did, at least, have one of each of their daughters at their son's naming ceremony, though Emma looked uneasy and tense at the shot Granny had snapped of all of them with Ruby while Anna was beaming as she held her brother - one of the few moments, actually, in which Anna was captured looking happy and healthy, David noticed as he worked to replace the photographs he'd really not taken much time to look at despite the effort Snow had put into framing them with his own farm chores and seemingly endless alderman meetings.

She _did_ look happy in her last one, though, that had survived damage in its standing frame while Emma looked less than thrilled in the background of the wedding party. Apart from those, however, Anna seemed generally sleep deprived and forcing a smile in mostly composed shots that Snow had nagged her into, often with Killian, though there were a few candid shots... also mostly with Killian. There didn't seem to be any of her with Henry that Snow hadn't arranged at holidays while there were more new ones with Emma and their grandson, including one David was proud to have captured of them grooming Geronimo that was pretty artistic if he did say so. He actually enjoyed photography, but hadn't much time for it. Perhaps once he finished his return to the Sheriff's Department and passed off this alderman thing to someone else he could pick up the hobby...

"Looks like the kitchen is going to need a coat of bleach," Snow's voice interrupted David's ruminating and he set the photo he was holding down to pull her into a quick embrace.

"And the umbrellas and vase are going in the trash," David sighed.

"Here I was hoping Whelby had just peed on the rug again," she groaned before fixing the blanket around their son

Snow then picked up the photograph that David had last been holding of their daughter and grandson and smiled. "That really is a wonderful shot, Charming."

"I was thinking maybe after all of this I should find the time to pick it up as hobby," he shrugged. "Henry doesn't use that old camera much now that he's got a phone."

"I think that's a wonderful idea," Snow beamed. "I bet you could even get them put on display when Belle opens the Library's second floor art gallery."

"I don't know about that..."

Shrugging, Snow set he photo down and considered, "Well, at the very least, it's something artsy to geek out with Neal over. He's not really into farming or swordfighting and he's been putting a lot of work into getting the gallery finished with the other renovations for the grand reopening."

"Just because he's with our daughter doesn't mean we have to become friends and hang out, Snow," David reminded. "Attempting that with Hook generally lead to drinking and unprovoked acts of violence. And now that he thinks we're 'mates' I've lost all leverage with him."

Snow rolled her eyes. "He's a three hundred year old pirate. You _never_ had leverage with him. He could've cared less about you being the father of the woman he was pursuing. He even made discovering he'd killed your father more about his own dramatics than any presumption that you'd take revenge. It's always been a given in that man's mind that baring poisoned demon blades, he'll best anyone he's crossed who comes looking to do him in for it. He's got Regina's ego topped with narcissistic personality disorder. According to Archie, anyway.

"And," she continued, "I don't think Neal is ever going to get you involved in Killian's brand of male boding. I just think he would appreciate if you showed him you two have some similar interest other than Emma and horse husbandry. Violet's father expressed a rather unfortunate social norm of our world that artisans are generally not considered respectable spouses. If you're nobility, it's all about swords and fighting dragons and then drinking big pints of ale while regaling the dragon-slaying. If you're a peasant, it's some steady manual labor occupation like farming or a dependable trade like a blacksmith. Writing and painting are for holy men and what I now assume are older gay men with _made-up_ dead wives they loved so much they can't possibly remarry.

"Which is stupid, of course," Snow continued. "Being a teacher gave me a great appreciation for the arts and I really want Belle and Neal to succeed at getting more people to visit the Library and learn about _all_ of our worlds."

"But first," David sighed, "we have to make sure Storybrooke doesn't become a fiefdom run by your fake adoptive father and another crazy witch."

* * *

With the bad guys rounded up, the good guys gathered in the mansion's dining room, everyone seated at the table. It wasn't the round table of Snow and Charming's war room, but it worked in a pinch.

"I hope you have something good to contribute," Regina remarked when Rumplestiltskin entered with Jefferson, rounding out those in attendance.

"I always have something to contribute, dearie," Rumplestiltskin retorted and with a wave of his hand, a model of the compound appeared on the dirt floor in the middle of the circle, "but I would rarely describe that as 'good' and this is no exception, unfortunately."

Looking at the magical model, David observed, "It looks normal, just like Archie said earlier."

Archie himself inquired, "You were looking at wards in the Wildlife Refuge near the gorge?"

"Which isn't even a gorge, really," explained Jefferson. "It was a stripe mine in the eighteen hundreds created from a natural lake that was drained into the harbor. I wondered years ago, when I first discovered the mines, if they came from our world or were part of this one, and as it turns out, the mining tunnels around here predate Storybrooke by a good hundred years and were shut down in the early nineteen hundreds.

"I suspect this area was 'chosen' by the Dark Curse," he continued, "in part because the old mines provided an ideal network to infuse natural tourmaline crystals with magic and sustain the main active components: freezing time and augmenting memories. I'm fairly certain the Wishing Well itself is from a rock core sample taken by the company that leased the land in the 1960s and had a brief and ill-fated copper-zinc mining operation that discovered previously unknown mine shafts bored through limestone which is, of course, notorious for sinkholes. We have them to thank for our town's ponds and small lakes and no doubt the bones of some of those mine collapse victims are still at the bottom of some of them, particularly the ones from the eighteen hundreds that went unreported."

"What's that got to do with our current problem?" asked David, "other than making us all nervous now about taking our kids to the duck pond?"

"The second round of strip mining," said Rumplestiltskin, "that drained the gorge exposed a natural entrance to caves that the original miners discovered and it would seem fatally attempted to exploit for metal ore. Maleficent's prison under the library, for example, is a natural cave and they seem to exist in pockets all over the valley, including one of the deeper systems adjacent to the gorge that is not easily seen let alone accessed by the public."

"I nearly fell into it during that bad rain storm a few years ago," recalled Snow. "Not a problem, though, I presume for a witch."

"And it appears," said Jefferson, "that the rest of Arthur's stash of Middlemist seeds isn't the only thing that's being stored down there, though it definitely explains who's the real drug lord in town."

"What else is down there?" asked Snow.

"Avalon sand," Rumplestiltskin answered.

"That's the stuff Arthur used to brainwash Camelot, isn't it?" asked Emma. "You think George and Tremaine plan to use the mine tunnels to put us all under their thrall?"

"Or they could easily just put it in the water supply," Belle suggested. "It may just be the safest storage spot they could find until carrying out the distribution. In Camelot it was easy. Nimue had propagated Middlemists in soil rich in Avalon sand in order to essentially resurrect the burned seeds of remaining plants from her kingdom. This created a symbiotic magical relationship between the sand and flowers. Since Camelot was surrounded by fields of the flowers and pretty much everyone had them in their gardens or in vases in their homes, the sand's magic was easily dispersed to the entire population through the flower spores."

"But Anton," Snow recalled, "discovered the potentially dangerous properties of the flowers and we banned them from cultivation and sale. That may have been part of Arthur's plan before he was killed. To bide his time until he could grow enough flowers that he could do the same to use that he did to Camelot."

"More than likely," Rumplestiltskin nodded. "And since his most loyal goons chose to take sanctuary here rather than face punishment in Camelot, they were more than happy to divulge that plan to anyone looking to bring in some Old World Order to Storybrooke. Or perhaps just to get revenge on those who exposed and killed the tyrant they _willfully_ followed even without his spell forcing their allegiance. Not everyone dreams of a world of kittens and rainbows."

"So," spoke Philip, "we just have to recover these materials before they can use them against us."

"Which they will most certainly do soon," Regina stated. "Whether Tremaine thought she would succeed in trapping the town's royals to decrease opposition or not, we all know George well enough that he would have a contingency plan should that not succeed to speed up the time table. He lost a war and a coupe attempt. And since then has clearly been playing a long game to get his conviction overturned and then gain support as some sympathetic, wrongly vilified and deposed leader who will bring back all the old ways that people miss - along with the ones they don't, like beheadings and firing squads."

"Then how do we ensure we're not on the receiving end of either of those?" asked Abigail, who had her daughter beside her chair in a bassinet.

Everyone exchanged uncertain and pained looks. Well, everyone save Belle, Rumplestiltskin, Jefferson, and Whale who'd been dragged out of bed unwillingly for the meeting; they all loved research while the majority of the good guys approached looking for answers to their villain problems in books with the enthusiasm and skill set of a teenage Buffy Summers in the high school library.

As the clock tower struck the midnight hour, everyone sat back tiredly in their chairs - and Emma's hairdo fell apart into a tangled mess.

* * *

 **AN** : "Fraturday" is a TV/film industry term for the much-hated shoots that go from late Friday night to early Saturday morning. I made up all the kingdom names and history stuff using mostly names of authors credited with the original fairytales. "Red Balls" was a crack-based spoof of Red Bull from _Chappelle Show_ and Beef-O-Reno is from _Seinfeld_ (Rusty!). The Gordian Knot is from Greek mythology and is apparently the mythical origin of the "loophole". Ragnarok is my nod to the _Thor_ movie that was awesome! I am so nerdy that I actually read about Maine mining at Maine*gov. There's a virtual mining pdf file! I had been wondering since Season 1 what Maine's mining history was given how shocked and skeptical Emma seemed of such an industry ever having existed in the state, but I never did get around to looking it up, just I never bothered to find out (and still haven't) if that same Vancouver gorge used on the show made an geological sense in Kansas when it first appeared on _Smallville_ years ago and made me and others on the Internet remark "Is that a legit thing?" I wondered as well about just the underground mines in Storybrooke and thought "how absurd!" along with a lot of other people when Emma and Elsa blasted their way out of those mining tunnels onto the beach. Now, I give ZERO credit to any of the writers on the show, because if they get anything right it's like Storybrooke's broken clock. But it turns out, it _is_ all legit. Maine had, once upon a time, a booming metal ore mining industry in exactly the coastal region where Storybrooke, by it's drive time to Boston, would be located. One town in the area even has a coastal mountain strip mine made from a drained natural lake into its harbor. There's also a lead mine right on the beach with tunnels that flood at high tide. Limestone also used to be a quarried mineral in the same era, but like the other mines were mostly out of business by the early 1900s as they were either mined our or new advancements in building materials made it financially unfeasible. Even granite ceased being a major export. Presently, the only major mining industries in Maine are sand for cement, clay for bricks, and tourmaline from one of the oldest gem mines in the US, mining the semi-precious stone compounded for 180 years! (tourmaline is compounded with elements such as aluminum, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium that makes it a wide variety of colors.)

 **Next up** : Possibly some battling. We'll see. This whole storyline is a tangent I got on trying to write some filler between Neal's return and Anna's return and I fear I might write myself into a corner if I don't get out of it and get back to the what I intended!


	28. Cars

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: Damn, I did again - as in didn't write the battle scene. I'm so sorry, readers! But with my interest in the fandom waning and having already worked on portions of the story after this, I just wanted to move things ahead to the character-driven parts I'm still interested in. Consider this chapter an interlude and the story will then continue in Part III.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT**

 **CARS**

 _...with a piercing look through the jail cell bars, King George sneered, "You may kill me, but know that you'd have died long ago if it wasn't for me, boy."_

 _"What's that supposed to mean?" Charming shot back, expression dubious._

 _"It means that I kept your jealous, vengeful twin from seeking you out and putting an end to your simple peasant existence," George explained. "If your father had never sought James out, your safety would have been secured by your brother's ignorance. Instead, Robert foolishly thought he could reclaim the child he gave up, the child stricken with the same sickness that infected his brother who died of a sword to the gut in self defense, not being thrown from his horse._

 _"Regret and grief drove your father to a foolish act that not only secure his death," the former King stated, "but implanted in the son he gave up a single-minded obsession with finding you and doing to you what his uncle had tried to do to your father: carry out the unrelenting task of that blood magic."_

 _While David digested his unsettling information, George sat down on the jail cell's cot. Seeing the counterfeit prince had no response, the deposed king continued, "It started with drawing pictures. He was just a little boy. But it unnerved me enough to call upon Rumplestiltskin who informed me of the particular reason your father chose to give away your brother over you. I was furious, of course, but I'd made my deal- and there were benefits to a child infused with such ambition, fearlessness, and blood lust - if molded to a less singular task._

 _"So I groomed the boy, steered that familial infatuation into other vices," explained George "I transitioned your brother's primary addiction from fantasies of your murder to whoring and gambling, vices easily satisfied on Paradise Island which James associated with the discovery of your existence. I would send him in search of clues until he got so wrapped up in his whores and his gambling that he delayed his murder plot."_

 _Leaning back against the wall, George concluded, "I essentially bankrupted my kingdom to keep my adopted son from killing you. And this is the thanks I get?"_

 _"Yes," Snow told him. "Because the only concern that drove you was the fear that his killing David would reveal he wasn't your son and thus not a legitimate heir."_

 _"Perhaps," shrugged George. "But I couldn't have my kingdom fall into ruin simply because my wife was unable to bare me a child. My cousins made King Xavior look like a cream puff. On the plus side, I suppose, being deposed from my throne in the midst of a war against a far more flamboyant foe did give me the opportunity to hunt them down and destroy them with no repercussions._

 _"But at the very least," he amended, "you should be grateful that I ensured your brother's firstborn was smothered before the cord was even cut or you'd have an evil nephew to deal with."_

 _"Thanks so much for that," sighed Charming._

 _"I don't suppose I'll get any thanks either," said George, "for dosing your true love with that sterility potion. Alas, you found a cure and thanks to that fairy's meddling you ended up with another generation of Good and Evil. I must say, I've enjoyed hearing how you two managed to brainwash yourselves into loving that vile child and being laughably supportive of every self-destructive, cruel, outright villainous thing she's done in pursuit of her evil desires under her own identity delusion that she was a savior."_

 _"Is that how you'd describe yourself then?" Emma cut him off. "Laughably supportive of James?"_

 _"I loved my son," George argued. "But I was under no delusions about his nature. I curbed it when I could and used it to the advantage of my kingdom when I could. I may have warped public perceptions but I never fooled myself into thinking it was natural to treat genocide like a game or a lover like a disposable sacrifice for monetary gain. I recognized that my son was what this world calls a psychopath. I'd say that, at least, makes me a better parent than yours."_

 _"Really?" Charming spoke up. "I'm not as stupid as you seem to think. I know you gave my brother's opponent a potion so he'd escape a fatal wound long enough to take James out when he was unaware."_

 _"Wait," Regina's interest in the conversation spiked and stood from the desk chair where she'd been filing her nails, "you're saying he had your brother killed?"_

 _"Obviously, bankrupting the kingdom to keep him from murdering me and causing bad PR was no longer working," replied Charming who then turned back to George. "Was it? So you made a deal with Midas and then offed James. Only Midas then altered the deal so you had to bring James back. But that actually seemed at the start to work out great for you, didn't it? You got rid of the psychotic, ambitious son, replaced him with a good version who'd do whatever you said, marry whomever you said. James had fulfilled his usefulness. He'd cultivated the image you wanted of a ruthless but passionate son, a capable ruler in public perception if hated by those who knew him privately. Once he failed with the Giants, there was nothing more he could do. You'd 'sacrificed' too much to keep him in line and paint the image you wanted of your successor, so that 'much' was keeping your kingdom solvent long enough for him to inherit it."_

 _"I'll admit, I always considered there would come a time when James needed replacing," shrugged George._

 _Charming scoffed. "I'm sure you even had a mistress picked out for me to impregnate so you could kill my firstborn and ensure the kid I had with Abigail wasn't evil...even if he or she would still pass on the curse. But you'd be dead of old age by the time that became an issue."_

 _"Quite possible."_

 _"Entirely possible," growled Charming. "So don't play victim or hero, old man. You used my brother to escape the problem of your dead kid. Then you used me to escape the problem of your replacement child. And when that didn't go your way, you targeted the woman I loved, not out of the goodness of your heart and concern for humanity, but just to hurt Snow for standing up to you and me, in my ignorance, from the future I wanted to make with her. Any secondary good that might have come from that had nothing to do with your motives."_

 _"And if you knew either of us at all," he continued, "you'd know that we would succeed where my father failed and find a way for both of our daughters to live full and happy lives."_

 _"Really?" spoke up the woman in the other cell. "How has that worked out for you?"_

 _Snow scoffed at her, "We really don't need to hear your take on the situation, Tremaine."_

 _"Oh, please, call me 'Gabrielle'," she insisted while twisting her anti-magic cuff. "I feel as though we ought to at least die on a first name basis, don't you?"_

 _"No one here is dying," said Emma. "We don't behead people like back in The Enchanted Forest. In this world, there's an actual system of just-"_

 _Belle barged into the Sheriff's Station. The brunet was wide-eyed and breathless as she exclaimed, "We have to get out now! She has the dagger and-"_

 _"Tremaine!?" sputtered Regina._

 _Before she could answer, Belle suddenly collapsed and standing behind her in the entry way was...the dead old woman from the cabin in the woods!?_

 _"You're dead!" Emma gasped._

 _"Someone is dead," she shrugged, amending, "I understand you're familiar with the transfigured body in the wrong grave con. What is it they say? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice-"_

 _"Who the hell are you?" Regina demanded._

 _"I don't think that's it. But to answer your question: judge, jury, and executioner," she replied, pulling her hands from the pockets of her cloak, each one holding a heart. She squeezed and they cracked and disintegrated to dust._

 _In the two cells George and 'Gabrielle' fell dead._

 _"Don't worry," she continued while walking around Belle. "She's still alive. I wouldn't want to end the fun of torturing the Dark One too soon. And as for your question, you can call me 'Gothel'."_

 _"Wait, Mother Gothel from Rapunzel?" asked Emma._

 _"I'm no one's mother, dear," she said, "but I did know that cowardly girl. I killed her brother, the heir to her kingdom's throne actually and built the tower your father visited in that forest and let him free the girl in what I can only assume both idiotically assumed was part of a hallucination," she continued with an askance look at Charming._

 _"A kingdom's succession crisis and a poor girl's madness was a simple sacrifice to obtain your blood, Prince Charming, as a way around your family's protections."_

 _"Hold on," Snow interjected. "You've been hatching some plot to take over Storybrooke since we weren't even here?"_

 _"But were destined to return since your daughter hadn't completed her fate to purge magic of the Black Fairy's curse and in order to do that it had to be recast and its power relocated back to this world," Gothel nodded imperiously. "And the only way that would happen would be for you to crush your true love's heart...but you're also far too needy and self-important to let him go and believe any universal laws of magic apply to you, Your Majesty. So you were sure to cast it, resurrect your beloved, and the result would be thwarting the very reason you cast the Curse, because even perfect little princesses who are the fairest of them all are not exempt from magic's price...they just tend to pass them off onto other innocent people while being utterly oblivious to being the cause of any suffering."_

 _"She's not wrong there," snorted Regina, receiving a glare from Snow._

 _"I get it," Emma spoke up. "You wanted to wait for Fiona to be out of the picture to make your move. Maybe even the gods if you knew about the books. You look ancient enough to have been banging Merlin's apprentice. But just like that old geezer you were still moving all your pieces on the chess board in a game we didn't even know we were playing...and those two," she gestured to the dead coconspirators, "apparently didn't know their full part in it either."_

 _"They got what was coming to them," Gothel shrugged. "Gabrielle crossed me long ago after coming to me for help winning the heart of some king who fancied her sister. She betrayed blood and true love in an attempt to get power. I killed her once, from what I understand, but then that time travel idiocy occurred and the paradoxes forced the gods to create The Land of Untold Stories - or perhaps it was an excuse to create it as a spin-off? In any case, in this universe my sister escaped to avoid the punishment she was meant to receive, all because your silly little whore sister and her swashbuckling dolt lover fell down a deranged lunatic's time portal. After that I had to wait not just for Fiona to settle the score with her estranged son - I think we can all agree she wins the worst 'Mother' contest - but for the gods to keep reality from falling apart. After all, what good is ruling the worlds if they're just going to implode in a year or two? Perhaps a decade or two if I'd murdered your entire family to keep them from further fuckery, but I rather intended to live longer than that."_

 _"With that butter face?" scoffed Regina._

 _"You sound like a raving lunatic," Snow told Gothel._

 _"We're not going to let you take over any worlds, lady," added Emma. "Whatever you're planning, it ain't gonna happen on my watch!"_

Gretel shut the laptop and handed it back to Henry with a critical, "It still sounds cheesy, though points for using 'whore' if you can get that by your parental censors. But your need more exposition and description of the characters. Plus, no one cares about all the family crap with your grandpa. They want action and sex. No one wonder your book in that other future was a total bomb, Henry!"

"Thanks," glowered Henry, taking the computer and shoving in his backpack behind the counter of Marine Garage.

"Why are you writing this shit anyway?" she asked while grabbing a candy bar from the snack rack by the register. "You're not The Author anymore. That was just a scam."

"I like to write," Henry shrugged, "and someone's got to record my family's history _accurately_. You're right that the books were a scam. The gods hired people who'd write stuff the way they wanted it written."

"History is written by the victors," quoted Hansel as he walked in from the garage. He continued. "Dad said everything's hooked up. Whale's doing his thing - whatever that is - with the heart you stole."

"I didn't steal it," Henry insisted.

"Yeah, you did," snorted Gretel while turning up the volume on the small TV that was showing the 11 o'clock news weather forecast.

"Okay, maybe," he conceded. "But it wasn't doing anyone any good in that vault. Mom was never able to figure out where all the hearts left over from her mom came from. I mean, Cora liked turning people into zombies and shit. I figure it's saving someone from being a rotted corpse that she buried alive without, you know, crushing it."

"Just keep telling yourself that, buddy," Hansel patted him on the shoulder.

"If you think this is stupid," Henry asked, "why are you helping?"

"We never said it was stupid," Gretel argued.

"Just that you were stupid for thinking you wouldn't get in trouble for doing it," concluded Hansel and he then hushed them and shouted, "LIVE RADAR, DOC!"

Whale came hustling in dressed in his mad scientist gear followed by a less enthusiastic Michael Tillman in his mechanic's overalls; he'd gotten stuck in the Igor assistant role.

"Excellent!" Whale tittered. "That storm cell will be over us soon."

"You're sure this'll work?" asked Henry and the doctor shrugged.

"Hell no. Those books you found while pretending to help Belle with her stacks sorting for the Library renovation are promising, but unless Professor Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang flies through a portal with some magical flubber to explain the particulars, I'm winging it."

Thunder cracked close by and Whale rubbed his hands together in excitement before pulling on his thick leather gloves and practically skipping back into the garage.

Frowning, Tillman remarked to his daughter, "I can't believe I let him take out your appendix. This guy is nuts! Why am I even involved in this!? I should tell your parents," he directed at Henry.

"But you won't," Henry argued, "because you owe me. If I hadn't guilted my mom into acting like she believed in the Curse to help you, Hansel and Gretel would either be living out there in foster homes or have died in a car wreck."

The mechanic sighed and Gretel told Henry, "You have enough of your grandpa in you, Henry, that after being raised by the Evil Queen and a few years with Captain Rapist as your step-grandpa-slash-step-dad I really hope you stay in therapy to make sure you don't turn into a total psycho like your grandma-slash-great-grandma-slash-step-great-great-grandma Cora or your half-aunt-slash-step-half-great-great aunt. No offense. But nature _and_ nurture are _not_ on your side."

Before Henry could muster a snarky retort, the lights flickered.

"IT'S GO TIME, PEOPLE!" Whale bellowed. "LIGHTS OFF! GOGGLES ON!"

"Better make sure both you and that laptop are sitting on something rubber," Gretel told Henry, "or your _brilliant historical writing_ might get fried with your balls."

Henry flipped her off but took his backpack along to a stack of tires in the garage where Tillman was activating the hydraulic lift and complaining as rain began to fall in, "I never should have had that skylight put in."

"Everyone, take your places!"

Everyone's places was also on the tires to avoid electrocution while Whale did last minute fiddling with his mad scientist contraption that was wired to a lightening rod now on the roof of the garage.

As they waited for the storm to pass over, Henry pondered the recent events and how best to record them. They'd all been played by that Gothel witch, even Zelena to whom she'd promised her magic back. He couldn't say he felt bad that Zelena had died in the battle, though he did feel bad that Regina had been forced to do it as taking any lives, even bad ones, really unnerved her like she might lapse back into random heart-crushing. It was probably for the best, though that his aunt was sort of at peace - at least not suffering with her Evil Twin-ness in life anymore without her magic or her creepily contrived rape-acquired baby that she'd doted on like a crazy person with a baby doll they thought was alive.

Of course, that had left Henry's grandparents feeling out of sorts about what to do regarding his _other_ aunt. If they could remove Zelena's magic, but not her curse that kept her heart dark no matter how she tried to reform and which had dragged her back in to villainy like an addiction without any real medical invention to ultimately curb her impulses, then was there hope for Anna?

When Henry had left them at the Town Hall helping the usual influx of disaster victims, his mom had been arguing that death was a kinder fate for her sister as someone who could never be free of what she was while his grandparents were countering that she just needed to believe that and that even if it was true for Zelena who'd gotten the full brunt of the Evil Twin curse, Anna had been spared even more of its effects than James so there had to be a way to break it. Then it all got a bit messy talking about Whale dissecting Zelena's brain and Henry had said he was going home - which wasn't a lie, he was just stopping off at Marine Garage to-

There was a sudden bright flash and almost simultaneous crack that rendered Henry momentarily blind and deaf. When he regained those senses, Whale was using a stick to flip a switch on a large, crackling generator upon which had been placed the heart. Electricity was still streaming down from above and then was joined from bellow, coiling up with a red light around the lift's base...

888

It was after midnight when Emma slid out of the passenger seat of her parents' pickup still in her ballgown - but carrying her heals.

Neal had stayed behind at the pawn shop to help his father clean up the mess there, which meant no immediate foot-rubs...though she was too exhausted to enjoy one anyway. Even the candlelit bubble bath she'd been dreaming of for hours would have to wait until she could stay awake long enough not to drown...or burn the house down.

As Emma swatted the garden gnome with the small, muddy shovel kept by the tree at the curb, a cheerful beep caught her attention and she turned to find the Bug lurching its way around the corner on the rain-slicked street. She wasn't even certain at this point where she or Neal had left it.

"What the he-"

The car pulled up to the curb and her son got out of the driver's seat.

"Seriously!?" she huffed. "Henry, you know you're not allowed to drive yet! Especially not at night!"

"I wasn't driving," Henry insisted, grabbing his backpack from the passenger seat.

"Uh-huh," Emma answered, crossing her arms. "You actually expect me to buy-"

The Bug's horn beeped again.

Emma blinked. She watched Henry open the garage and Christine's lights come on. The Bug's headlights flashed. The Crown Vic's headlights flashed. The Bug beeped. The Crown Vic beeped. The Bug swished its wiper blades as rain began falling again. So did the red and white Chevy. Christine's engine revved and the one time demonic car peeled out of the garage and onto the street beeping maniacally and was followed by Emma's beloved yellow Volkswagen in the direction of Marine Drive.

Emma watched them go in shock and dismay and found herself just too exhausted to start screaming at her son about it. She did, however, pin Henry with her best Evil-Mayor-Regina look.

"Grounded?" sighed Henry.

"So grounded," Emma confirmed.

* * *

 **AN** : Sorry again about the lack of resolution for the battle. That entire storyline got away from me. And then I read part of an episode recap that Tremaine wasn't actually the Big Bad and got killed by Gothel who was the one who raped Wish Hook...or something? So, I decided to just tie up the lose ends with Gothel beiing the old woman from Aurora's cabin who killed someone else and planted their body the way Cora did with Archie. Gothel is _also_ the younger apothecary that Archie referenced many chapters ago and who found Jack Horner in the woods where Neal had left him unconscious. If I'd gone into more detail, I would have revealed that Horner was one of her drug dealers and because he got sloppy and revealed himself, she turned him insane.

 **Next up** : Part III kicks off with a look at Emma's renovated bungalow (there will be a photo-shopped picture on tumblr) and some mother/daughter shopping spree bonding.


	29. She-Ra

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

* * *

 **The Outstanding Balance of Morality  
(revised edition)  
**

 **PART 3  
**

 **CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE**

 **SHE-RA**

Snow White rose early to the chirping of birds who'd found the colorful new houses hung in trees around the farm. The Queen who essentially had no kingdom to rule over first went about brushing her teeth and short bobbed hair and then freed her two-year-old son from his room. It was a simple life compared to her previous lives of princess, bandit, and queen... at least when no one was trying to destroy Storybrooke.

This particular morning, with the warmer weather and Henry in need of some help on a biology project, Charming was on a camping trip with their grandson and unofficial son-in-law to ensure Emma's firstborn passed his class without anyone fudging his grades this year. That meant the kitchen was quiet as Snow helped her younger and _slightly_ less sarcastic Neal shake a container of shrimp flakes in the small plastic fish tank that had replaced the bowl cracked in the Battle of the Kitchen which, for better or worse, it's occupant had survived.

As Captain Nemo Number 2 ate his shrimp flakes Snow somewhat guiltily enjoyed the absence of her husband's hyperactive collie while taking her son to the mud room to put on their boots and jackets. Farm chores came before breakfast, something David insisted their son learn early, even before he was old enough really participate. Recently, though, Snow had begun introducing Neal to gathering eggs, so that was their shared task this morning while their part-time farm hand would arrive later to take care of the rest.

Teaching her son not to squeeze his little hands too hard was a work in progress, but today they managed to get all the eggs without needing to make some omelets ahead of schedule. Back in the kitchen Snow divided up the basket of white, brown, and teal colored eggs into half cartons, one going into the refrigerator and the other into a cooler with a bottle of milk to boil for hot chocolate at Emma's for Sunday brunch. It might not be the big spread that David would make for his Sunday pop-ins, but Snow suspected that Emma, like her sister, wasn't entirely fond of those intrusions but tolerated them for the leftover pancakes. Today it would just be eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns... with a side of sale ads.

After loading in her breakfast supplies, Snow buckled her son into the car and turned the Suburban toward the highway with a feeling of hopefulness and a sense of peace in her heart that had been eluding her for a long time, longer than she'd wanted to admit at first and which had lingered beyond all her efforts to quench it. She had to wonder if some part of her heart had subconsciously known that she had two daughters instead of one and had remained restless ever since regaining her memories when Emma broke the Dark Curse. The most frustrating part of it all, of course, was that not _everyone_ was ignorant of the situation.

Snow had to resist the urge to take out that carton of eggs and lob them at the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Convent as she passed the old stone building on her way toward town... though that wouldn't really be fair to the fairy-nuns there that had yet to free themselves from Blue's cult.

There was no point in dwelling on that this morning, though. The sun was out, the birds were chirping, the flowers were starting to bloom, and Emma hadn't said "no" to a shopping trip for house-wares and baby supplies at places _other_ than the flea market... though they would still go to the flea market since that was the only shopping that Emma actually enjoyed. If only _Anna_ enjoyed it rather than considering any kind of furniture and house-wares shopping such a hassle that her home looked more like a funeral parlor than a place people lived in.

Of course, no one was living there now with Anna away, so Snow took a route through the more affluent suburbs surrounding the town center to go by 115 West 10th Street on her route toward Emma's. The number on Anna's door was still 710 from its transplanted location over a cavern Anna had wanted to use to house Excalibur, though it was now back over its regular cinderblock basement and with the larger backyard that had room for more than just that potting shed Anna had used for creepy arts and crafts rather than gardening, something else her second daughter refused to do.

Snow had secretly planted some bulbs back in the fall and now the otherwise dreary-looking gray Victorian had a yard full of tulips, freesias, and daffodils. Anna would probably _hate_ it when she got back, but Snow was just happy to have made the house look a bit more inviting than its usual horror movie gray with drawn curtains and those odd little topiary boxwoods that seemed to suit Anna's manicured preferences and personality in contrast to Emma's more untamed manner... other than their contrary choice in haircare, anyway, Snow mused while passing by the hair salon as she turned onto Main Street.

She just hoped Anna didn't come back with lice...

A banner now hung across the single intersection with a traffic light advertising "Storybrooke Library & Art Gallery Grand Reopening Next Saturday 12-7 PM. Music, Refreshments, & Free Library Cards!" Probably, Belle was hoping that the day before Mother's Day would attract people to buy books for their mothers, which was as good a selling point as any, Snow supposed, for a building few people ever visited. Really, she just hoped that people turned out for the gallery opening as Neal had put a lot of work into that after renting the space, work that included enduring time with August who was attempting to use fine-tuning his woodworking skills as a better means of grief-management than drinking, gambling, and whoring.

Snow worried that Anna might go down that path now separated from her sister's tempering influence and paired up with her day-drinking husband whose temperament still tended toward bullying weaker individuals and sexually harassing behavior. Killian Jones was anything but an ideal romantic match... at least for anyone other than his own reflection. But that ship had sailed into its unnatural sunset and now Snow could only deal with the aftermath and consequences of bad parenting influenced by uptight guilt.

At least Snow didn't worry so much about Emma's romantic situation. They didn't see eye-to-eye on marriage, of course, but her eldest daughter had (re)found herself the kind, compassionate, supportive partner, the sort that Snow had always hoped she would... and for a few years had to delude herself that enough mother-in-lawing could make out of a pirate. She could still try in that regard, of course, but Anna probably didn't want Killian to change any more than he hadn't much done to suit her own watered-down malevolence.

She really wasn't intending to think so negatively of her other daughter. Snow loved Anna unconditionally, even if it had taken some months to adjust her thinking, reliable all those memories as "Anna" instead of "Emma". Different names and a complicated cursed condition didn't ultimately change that they'd grown closer, developed a mother-daughter relationship that Snow, at least, felt was stronger than she'd thought possible after the fiasco of Neverland. Of course, that was _Emma_ to which she'd said those unkind things, but _Anna_ hadn't know any differently then and had still let Snow slowly into her life... even while simultaneously extracting herself from Emma's established life and into a new one at 115 West 10th Street that, as Emma put it "involved less sheriffing and parenting and more pirate-fucking and pancake-making".

"Birdies!" Neal squealed suddenly, pulling Snow _thankfully_ from her musings.

She'd turned onto Marine Drive away from the bobbing boats of the private marina in the direction of the commercial marina with its big fishing boats, masts rising above the tall grass of the estuary. There were egrets, herons, ducks, a few hawks, and even a pair of swans with two fluffy gray babies scrambling onto the backs for a ride in one of the small ponds that dotted the inlet. If there had been time, Snow would have taken her son for a short walk on the trails, but she had a daughter eating for two who would be grumpy if she had to wait or settle for Pop-Tarts after a promised shopping bribery meal.

As Snow turned into the neighborhood of cottages, bungalows, and shotgun shacks, she noticed that improvements were continuing at many other properties now that it was spring... and now that there was no longer a manic-depressive car terrorizing the area, mowing down mailboxes and doing donuts on front lawns.

Said car, a red and white classic Crown Victoria, was just pulling out of the driveway when Snow turned the corner and it sped by with windows open and "I Got You Babe" on the radio... followed closely by Emma's yellow Volkswagen Bug that beeped cheerfully at Snow... while, standing in the driveway in her bathrobe, Emma shouted, "REMEMBER TO BE BACK BY TEN, HERBIE!"

In contrast, Neal cheerfully shouted out the window at the Bug, "BYE-BYE, HERBIE!"

Snow had 'explained' to her son that Hereby had retired from racing years ago but had fallen on hard times for gas and repairs money, so the Bug had gotten a regular paint job and teamed up with Neal's sister and namesake and had been Emma's car ever since, accept for a few years when Anna had borrowed her... not that Neal entirely understood the concept of twin sisters going on seven months ago when Anna left, so that was a bit of a challenge still...

"Now, are you going to be good for your sister?" Snow asked her son. "No running around and knocking things over? No throwing food at breakfast?"

"Wanna Emmy Tart," was Neal's response.

"If you behave," Snow told him, "you can have one before lunch."

The prospect of having a sweet _before_ a meal, the sort of thing usually scolded as ruining appetites was enough to get a hearty nod from Neal.

Getting out of the Suburban, Snow walked around to the sidewalk where Emma was still grumbling.

"Stupid twitipaited cars. Of all the insane things this town has introduced me to, _this_ is by far the weirdest and most annoying."

"That you have two sentient cars or that your yellow Bug insists on being called 'Herbie' because Henry show it those movies?" chuckled Snow, getting out her bags of supplies before unbuckling her son.

"Both," Emma grumbled. "I'm just dreading that stupid Crown Vic coming home one day with spinning rims and _my_ car with racing stripes like the car version of a tramp stamp. One teenager in this house is enough, especially with this overactive kid on the way," she concluded, rubbing her now quite swollen middle.

Taking that as an invitation, Neal gave Emma's belly a pat and chirpy, "Hi, Spidey!"

Snow snorted and Emma groaned, telling her, "You just had to read the kid _Charlotte's Web_. You do realize that 'Spidey' will get old enough to get really annoyed with her barely-older-than-her uncle calling her that and blood will be drawn?"

"Probably," Snow agreed, "but right now it's adorable. And so is your brother."

She ruffled his hair and told him, "I just want to eat you up!"

Neal replied daringly, "Do it! I taste like blood, Mommy!"

Emma broke into peels of laughter. "Man, I really love macabre toddlers. Good one!" she complimented, giving her brother a high five.

Snow rolled her eyes while fighting a smile for disciplinary purposes. If only Emma and her _sister_ would get along so well.

"Well, I'm sure your neighbors are just happy they don't have a manic car terrorizing them anymore," Snow returned to the previous subject as Emma helped carry her bags up the repaired front walk toward a now quite charming little bungalow that had an even more vibrant garden than her sister's thanks to the hard work of Snow and the Dwarfs... who'd also pitched in with some of the building renovations.

The brick red paint color had been replaced with a cerulean blue while the narrow and cracked front granite steps were replaced with wider wood stairs in the home's original paint color. The rotting wooden porch supports had their clapboard bases replaced with brick to fit sturdier columns that themselves supported the full width of the second floor overhang, expanding the porch for sitting areas on both sides of the now sanded-down-to-its-original walnut wood door.

The Dwarfs had also fixed the fieldstone wall using rocks from the mines so there was no longer worry about tripping on the way to and from the house.

"Oh, one final touch," Snow pulled a leftover birdhouse from a bag and perched it on a rock just inside the wall.

"I was wondering when you'd spring one or a hundred of those things on me," Emma remarked. "And the neighbors do seem happier. They're nicer to me now, anyway. The old lady across the street doesn't give me the stink-eye anymore. _Hereby_ is even going to drive her to the Town Hall for a bingo tournament later. I figure I need to keep that car busy having his - _his_ , that's so weird - own life - _also weird_ \- apart from just following Christine around or I'll have the car version of Hook getting drunk on high octane in my garage."

"Well, you're being a good neighbor," said Snow, reaching the porch. "That's the important thing."

"It's _an_ important thing," Emma shrugged, nudging her brother inside after opening the front door. "So, how'd the play-date go yesterday?"

"Good, actually," Snow answered with relief in her voice, setting her non-food bags in the front entry. "They spent the whole time in the parlor at Granny's doing make-believe."

"I was talking about yours and Aurora's," Emma joked, leading the way through the livingroom and into the now larger kitchen with the carton of eggs.

"Fine. We had lunch and finalized our pitch to the City Council for a traditional community on the old bean field land."

"Just glad you guys got it all figured out peacefully."

"Now you just have to figure out who to hire as a deputy - and soon," Snow reminded, giving Emma's stomach a gentle nudge - and receiving one back from her granddaughter.

"Hey, I _have_ been doing interviews," she insisted while pulling out dishes, "but so far it's a bunch of mouth-breathers. I need someone competent. More competent than _I_ was when I had to take over for Graham."

After setting the dishes on the table, Emma helped Neal into a chair and asked, "What do you think? You wanna be my deputy, Little Bro?"

Her brother seemed to consider this, then responded with a completely unrelated remark and question, "You have bones inside of you. Take your skin off so I can see your bones?"

Emma snorted before responding, "But then my guts would fall out all over the floor. I don't think it's worth the mess, kiddo."

"Ella had them doing the 'this bone's connected to' song last week," Snow explained while starting the sausage she'd brought. "He's obsessed with that sort of thing now, but I'm not taking him for an x-ray just to satisfy his curiosity.

"Here, you can do the toast."

"Trusting me with toast? I'm honored," Emma quipped.

Turning back to Neal, she told him, "I can't show you my bones, but you can come along with me to the doctor next week if you want to see what your niece looks like inside my tummy. Whatdaya say?"

"Can I have blue Jell-O?"

"Ugh. You and my sister with the blue stuff." Emma made a face. "But I'm sure you can take some off a food tray."

"Emma!" Snow groaned as she began frying eggs.

"What? Lots of people leave their Jell-O. I remember you dumping most of it in the trash on your Mary Margaret hospital flower power tours that you quit because you nailed Whale and then started again like two weeks later because you wanted to nail Dad."

"I did not..." Snow began but her daughter's brow raised above the rim of her glasses, arms crossing, and she conceded. "Okay, fine. I had the hots for a married man _who was technically married to me_ which I knew in my heart because we have true love and _that_ is why I wanted to nail him. That, and I did think he was really hot..."

"Gross," Emma wrinkled her nose. "That was weird enough when you said that when I didn't know you two were my parents and David said we had the same chin so I was like your 'hot but _mean_ long-lost _older_ sister'. I am _not_ older!"

"He was trying to get under your skin," Snow waved her off. "You intimidated him. Your sister's not entirely wrong that you relied heavy on your appearance as part of your bountyhunter act to control your interactions with people. He just wanted to see what kind of a person you were underneath the new leather jacket you bought every time you had an argument with Regina and those highly impractical and unnecessary false eyelashes and curls."

Emma scowled and defended, "Hey, the curls weren't mind idea. That nutter _Goldilocks_ was running the salon and insisted I get my hair styled that way every time I got it trimmed and I didn't want to be rude when she was dishing all the dirt on Regina who clearly has some kind of unnatural magic for a flawless complexion, perky boobs, and a perfect ass without frosted-on concealer, a Wonder Bra, Spanx, and weekly visits to the Three Bears Day Spa."

"I do wonder," Snow mused, "what that story is. Both Goldilocks _and_ those bears turned out to all be criminals..."

"Some kind of simple con game gone sideways is my guess," shrugged Emma. "I'm just glad I didn't get Legionnaire's Disease. Give me a couple of horn-helmeted Vikings over Padding ton and Pooh's sketchy cousins any day. _Or_ over whatever magic Regina's using that'll bite her in her too-perfect ass one day. But I had to compete with that and freckles, a barely B-cup, and no butt implants was not going to be able to play her game on her field."

"So," quipped Snow, "your game plan was to try your slightly trashy and desperate version of sophisticated that worked for skips?"

Emma made a sardonic expression before answering as she buttered toast, "It was that or I'd just look like some grunge band roadie out of a Nirvana video. Maybe it wasn't the best way to go about it, but I'd only had a few months of practicing that look and it was my only game face. Plus, she seemed extremely shallow. I thought it might work. _And_ at least I didn't wear camel toe tight jeans like Anna. She can say I worry too much about my looks, but I don't have pants so tight that when I bend over you get a topographical map of my vagi-"

" _All right_ ," Snow cut her off before she said something Neal would repeat loudly in public. "Point made."

"I still don't get what's with the weird Catholic-nun-meets- _Little House on the Prairie_ look she's so weirdly fond of," Emma amended, shaking her head. "Plus those flowered blouses like she's a character in a cuckoo clock. Isn't that Scandinavian or something? Maybe Elsa's super gay handshake fried her brain? Or Hook has some weird mommy issue fetishes that she's trying to combine which is all creepier than dressing up like a dead woman to fake-out my kid into thinking I was a badass superhero."

"Henry would have thought that no matter what you looked like," Snow insisted. "And nothing is worse than those ridiculous skinny jeans that Hook wears."

"You say that, but you didn't see the plaid pants I wore in New York," Emma countered. "They are hilarious with his chicken legs, though. Why does he or anyone think he looks good in them?" Shaking her head, she amended, "I'll never understand what you and Dad, the half the town he hasn't assaulted, and the quarter of the town he has assaulted but don't care for some reason see in that scumbag... or his funeral attire taste in wedding clothes, even if that was completely appropriate considering."

"It was just a dark suit, Emma. And a desire to be a better person," Snow insisted. "It might not be for good reasons, but being assaulted is better than being killed. And if your sister didn't turn a blind eye to or participate in the assaulting, he'd probably try harder to only beat up people deserving of it. Which I _know_ ," she preemptively cut off her daughter, "you'll say is not a good justification, but-"

"But your world," Emma suggested, "ignores and justifies abuse even worse than this one does, and everyone's wholehearted support of my sister's relationship is just one glaring example that even if your man punches you in the face in public there's always a magical excuse and all the emotionally and psychologically manipulative stuff is just some macho public show and in private he's a submissive little cinnamon roll?" She rolled her eyes. "He's not."

"Well, it turns out that neither is your sister," Snow countered while dusting the hot chocolate with cinnamon. "And she'll probably be back soon now that Nemo's made it through the protection spell."

"Yay," Emma replied unenthusiastically as she set a small plate of scrambled eggs in front of her brother.

"Oh, don't be like that," Snow huffed, setting their filled plates on the table while Emma took the hot cocoa. "Anna is your sister."

"Who essentially suffers from a mental disorder that makes her paranoid and obsessed with me in a creepy stalker kind of way. You know, like Hook with her. I'd rather not be part of a weird love-hate triangle with those two."

"And I'd rather your brother didn't like shoving things up his nose," Snow stated, "but family isn't perfect. Just try to get along at family gatherings if that's the best you can do. It's worked with Regina and... somewhat with Gold and Belle."

"I guess..."

Emma chewed on a slice of bacon before asking, "So back to Aurora. Did you convince her to do the book reading?"

Snow groaned. "I am not going to jeopardize our working relationship by harassing her about her writing, Emma."

"But it's _good_. People _like_ it," Emma whined. "They like it enough that they voted for her stories in that community writing contest. Can you imagine how many people would actually turn up at the Library if they knew the mysterious smut writer was going to do a reading? _And then_ how many more would when those people started texting everyone else that it's _Aurora_ , the presumed prudiest princess of them all?"

"Yes, but don't you think it might put in peril our peace agreement and community building plans if suddenly their marriage was on the rocks?" Snow pointed out while cutting up sausage links into small bites for Neal. "And since Aurora and Philipwere magically contracted from birth, I can only assume there's all sorts of magical bindings to their marriage that would make dissolving it a very tricky business that would require Gold getting involved, which I don't imagine anyone would want."

"Yeah, all the more reason to be against royal matrimony," Emma stated. "My dumb sister had the chance to get out since it wasn't her name on the books and she doubled down instead. I love Neal and I don't see that changing, but that doesn't mean I want to end up in some kind of crazy blackmail situation with yet another evil wizard or witch long-lost relative enemy that's complicated by a magical marriage contract. I don't think either of us is going to murder anyone and need spousal protection to keep it under wraps in court. Well, other than offing Hook maybe, but there wouldn't be any reason to hide that."

"Neither of you are 'offing' your brother-in-law," Snow stated as she smeared marmalade on her toast.

" _Fine_. But that doesn't mean we're going to paint each other's nails or go shopping together," sighed Emma, adding along with hot sauce to her eggs, "meaning either Anna or Hook, those high-maintenance drama queens with bad hair. Even wearing ponytails can't hide the split ends Hook's hair crap _causes_." She rolled her eyes before concluding, "Maybe he should share his anti-balding merman spunk pomade with her too. Might help her not look like a hobo whose only solution is to wear her hair tied up tight in an evil-nun-bun."

Snow considered, "If she's still using it, I'll talk to her about it. Once you get passed the honeymoon phase, you really have to stop accepting gifts you hate to protect your partner's feelings. Especially if said gift looks like it might make your hair fall out."

Emma snorted at that, remarking. "I can't believe you ever thought I was the kind of person who'd go out in public looking like an angry owl nested in my hair just to keep from hurting my husband's feelings _over shampoo_."

Snow sighed, "Yes, well, I suppose I was trying to fit a certain narrative... or your sister was and we went along with that without question even though it was all a drastic change from the daughter we'd been getting to know."

"That you sometimes were glad was changing to fit that narrative," Emma reminded, "in non-hair-and-general-hygiene-related aspects of her life."

"Sometimes," Snow conceded after a sip of her cocoa, "which isn't fair to either of you. We can't get back the what we missed or the people we might have been, Emma, and considering the spoiled, thoughtless person I was in my youth, before I had to go on the run, I wouldn't want to be the princess or queen I'd have probably become if my father had never married Regina, every bit my mother and no guarantee that I'd gain whatever self-reflection she did before her death. So I shouldn't have been trying to impose or encourage some fairytale ideal on you or Anna. Maybe... I don't know... after New York I thought it would... counteract those personality changes that weren't for the better but instead it just seemed to make things worse and I just dug in and kept doubling down and convinced your father to join me, which probably was a lot easier when we shared my heart, which means it wasn't fair to him either imposing my feelings in that way. I'm sorry anyone got hurt because I was too... cowardly to deal with my identity issues for so long and then refused to admit to myself that certain things can't be fixed with a fairytale wedding or bringing someone back from the dead. Life is just complicated and messy and all of that makes us who we are, so trying to block it out and just start over is never going to work, not without doing more than singing a song about it."

"Well, that's something, I guess," Emma shrugged and having finished her food stood to take her plate to the sink.

"I'll wash up," Snow told her. "You go get dressed."

"If anything fits," groaned Emma and rubbed at her lower back considering, "but at least none of it is flower festooned or high-collared lace crap. Even if my back aches and my stomach itches, at least I'm myself. My not as cool without some chip on my shoulder and bad attitude that means punching random people in the face to solve problems type that hates contact lenses even when they didn't feel like sandpaper thanks to hormones and is trying really hard not to feel bitter still about my sister hijacking my life and everyone just going along with it."

Snow reached over to squeeze her hand as she set her own dish in the sink. "I know and no one expects you to get over that easily." She gave Emma a light shove. "Now go great ready. We have a lot of stores to get to after the flea market."

"Maybe we'll find everything I need at the flea market," Emma suggested.

"You are getting _new_ sheets and towels," Snow countered, adding Neal's plate to the stack, "no arguments. I may have subsisted on flea market purchases as Mary Margaret, but neither of us is living on a school teacher salary and you are not mustying up my washer and dryer trying to defunk someone's literal bargain basement linens. Speaking of which, we _are_ stopping at the appliance store and getting that washer and dryer pair on sale. No arguments about exhausting the budget on the stove and dishwasher. Your father and I will lend you the money - and then take some doubloons from Hook's cargo hold for reimbursement that he'd only waste on gambling, porn, and alcohol anyway. Maybe we can even get a good deal on a refrigerator to put in the garage if you're insistent on keeping this old blue one of Anna's for spite."

"It's not spite," Emma stated. "This fridge doesn't deserve to be the only colorful thing trapped in her funeral parlor interior decorating nightmare."

Snow let out a sigh. "All right, but it could die at any moment. And it's not large enough for four people anyway, never mind guests. So I'm adding a refrigerator to the appliance list. We can get everything delivered and installed this week. so you're ready for a Grand Opening after party."

"I am not throwing an after party," Emma stated, then amended, " _unless_ you get Aurora to do the book reading."

Snow gave her a sour look and shoed her off with a swatch of dish towel and huffed, "Get dressed!"

After her daughter had finally shuffled off, Snow got Neal cleaned up and set him down in front of some cartoons while she went around the house in search of other necessities.

The livingroom was mostly complete furniture-wise with a mix of things from Neal and Emma's respective New York apartments and some others from Belle's above the Library that Neal couldn't keep there when converting to an art studio. But the room could use some throws for the couch and new picture frames, particularly for Neal's charcoal drawing above the fireplace that was propped on the mantle instead of hanging properly above it so the space bellow could be used to display photographs, something Emma hadn't done anywhere yet, perhaps as a project that just never crossed her mind growing up in the foster system.

Snow added a visit to the craft store for frames and photo albums to her list with a note to make copies of the photos she had taken over the past few years. She'd spent many a gloomy winter day sorting through them to re-label the ones of Anna and Emma probably didn't want any duplicates of those, but there were old ones of Emma from the post-Neverland party and the months prior and those taken over the past seven months of Emma, Henry, et. al. that she'd probably want to collect and keep for family posterity even if she wasn't the sort to admit sentimentality or put more crafty effort into such a project than just throwing things in an old cigar box from a flea market.

Emma had, at least, invested some of the very small amount of whimsy she had in the nursery, Snow considered.

A branch from the apple tree that came down in the ice storm had been cut and varnished to look like a tree growing on the wall between old fence boards that had been cleverly notched and painted like skyscrapers and transitioned to a large forest mural meant to resemble both their local forest and the view from Emma's nursery.

Well, much of the design was probably Neal's, but Emma had participated in the room's renovation with more enthusiasm than she had helping Snow and David with her brother's at the Loft... though, considering Henry's father had been murdered just two days earlier, Snow couldn't exactly hold that attitude against her. She was just glad that Emma had allowed herself to have some fun with the room after the stress of getting the rest of the house done between her work and Neal working on the Library instead of just throwing some paint on the wall and a random crib in the corner... which pretty much described Neal's first nursery with only two weeks to put it together in between battling an insane witch.

The (now degrading) spells that kept Storybrooke isolated had allowed everyone some time for hobby projects that otherwise went pre-empted and delayed for months. In a weird way the almost end of existence (again/this time) had been good for the town, giving its residents the worry-free time to fix all the broken down and dilapidated things that the Dark Curse had maintained for a dreary, post-depression-era sort of look as well as start putting up some more individualized signage on Main Street instead of "Storybrooke" everything in the same font on the same cheap plywood signs covered in glossy paint that had been the bane of Geppetto's master carpenter existence... and, actually, might have been created with the express purpose of making the poor man miserable.

Snow made a mental note to stop by August's place before next Saturday and see how he was doing... and see if he'd ever attempted to complete the rocking chair that Geppetto had begun working on when Snow was pregnant but wasn't able to finish. Helping out with the Library and Art Gallery might have smoothed things (somewhat) over with Neal, but it hadn't improved Emma's opinion of Pinocchio...

"Whatdaya think?" Emma asked, interrupting Snow's musings. "I know it's not as... ornate as your ideas, but I think Neal's whacky idea with the boards and the tree branch actually turned out pretty cool."

"It really did," Snow agreed. "You're a child of two worlds and your daughter will be of three."

"Yeah, I do want Charley to know where she comes from, where her roots are," nodded Emma, "even if I'm glad she's not growing up there... and for all I missed of you and Dad, glad that I didn't either and turn out like in that Wish World." Frowning a little, she concluded awkwardly, "I'm sorry that I'm not sorry for never being Princess Emma. And also for not liking your nursery ideas."

Snow shook her head and gave her daughter a hug.

"Don't be sorry," Snow told her before letting go. "You like the person you are. And so do I. Maybe Princess Emma would have been just as wonderful in different ways. Maybe she would have hated my ideas too! But we'll never know beyond some silly genie magic creation that completely rewrote our world's history so is hardly an accurate representation to go by. We just have to make the most of who we are now, of the family we have here, and ensuring that our children have all the opportunities we didn't.

"And for me that includes you, even all grown up. So I'm sorry if I nagged you and upset you about this house or marriage. It's easy to get confused with wanting your children to have the best with what's best for your children. And you and Neal have done a wonderful job of turning this old house into a lovely home for you and your children, Emma.

"Really, I like all of it," Snow said of the room. "And I'm just glad you're doing well, Emma, that you're happy with your life. I wasn't sure that you ever would be."

"Even on my so-called wedding day?" Emma snorted on the walk back to the kitchen.

"Well, to be fair, on your 'so-called wedding day' it was entirely possible you'd die before your honeymoon," Snow reminded. "But what I mean is that I could tell you didn't feel like you really had a home here when you came back from New York. And I think I understand now that you needed to make this old house into a home for it to feel like yours, like it was part of you. It certainly reflects all the best parts of you... but to counter the worst, _I'm_ picking out a new toaster too," she amended as she grabbed her empty bags from the counter. "I don't know why your sister kept that one you destroyed when your father and I moved, but I don't trust it not to short out and burn this place down if someone forgets to unplug it."

"What can I say?" shrugged Emma. "Anna's nostalgic about her destructive tendencies, especially when she got me to give up enough control that she could act on them. I got drunk to not think about my son sleeping next door to his tyrannical mother having sex with my boss that I'd actually thought was a good person who saw some potential in me but turned out to be using hiring me as an f-u to _his_ boss-slash-lover. And while I was out of it, Anna dismantled your toaster with a screwdriver over that jerk who got drunk and kissed me against my will and made her jealous that it was me and not her, because that's her kink. And then I sobered up and that left me to try and fix this thing," Emma gestured to the toaster, "and feel like an idiot for taking it all out on your stuff."

Unplugging the toaster, she agreed, "Probably should get rid of it, though. Or maybe I can give it to Anna in exchange for her fridge and if I'm lucky it'll burn her house down with Hook in it..."

"Emma!" Snow gasped. "That's horrible! Stop wishing death on your brother-in-law and pry your brother away from the TV. We'll drop Neal off at Ella's on the way to the flea market," she explained while carrying her things toward the front hall. "She's putting the finishing touches on an art project her daycare kids are contributing to the Gallery, but she said Neal could play with Alexandra for a few hours."

"Nooooooo!" Neal complained, overhearing his fate. "No wanna play with Lexie!"

Snow sighed. "I know you think her tea parties are boring, sweetie, but I'll tell Ella to make sure you can also play superheroes, okay?"

Neal scowled, clearly not believing this would actually result in anything but an endless tea party with stuffed animals and fancy hats and Emma laughed and ruffled her brother's hair as she nudged him off the couch. "I feel you, kiddo. I was never a tea party girl. The one time this girl I was staying with and her friends had one when I was five and put on their fancy dresses and fake pearls and hats, I put on my She-Ra costume from Halloween and refused to take it off."

"That does sound like you," Snow chuckled, trying to imagine that little girl she'd glimpsed practicing for a talent show in a superhero costume... entirely unaware that fictional princess had existed in distant land in another time. But that was a topic for later revealing as the day wasn't getting any longer. "Now come on. Double time. We have a schedule."

"Doing anything fast is increasingly unlikely in my current state of girth," Emma reminded.

"Please, I still managed to participate in a midnight street fight with a wicked witch days before giving birth!" Snow reminded and her daughter rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, you should really not be bragging about that. It's not as admirable as you think it is, Mom."

* * *

The flea market was Emma's favorite "store" in town, at least from May through August when it was held outside in the community pool parkinglot next to the high school's authentic field.

"Maybe we can find some patio furniture," Snow considered . "Did Leroy put down the final coat of sealer on the back deck yet?"

Emma groaned. "I don't know. I lost track of what all the Dwarfs were doing. But I think patio furniture is pretty low on the list. It's only in the seventies for like a week in August. It was by shear will alone that I walked down the street in October in that tanktop showing off my guns. Not quite as impressive now..." she concluded while flexing her arms.

Snow rolled her eyes. "You might not be in mine-shaft-scaling shape, Emma, but you're still in far better physical shape than I was when I was pregnant with your brother... or before I was pregnant with your brother. Having to take care of a tweenage son and find time for dating while living in a city full of pizza and bagels -it's impressive you stayed as fit as you did."

"I'm just glad I retained some of that when I was Anna's unwitting passenger," Emma shrugged, "instead of getting stuck with an exact copy of what she did to hot body copy she got thanks to my hard work that really _was_ hard balancing with a kid and dating the Wizard of Oz _and_ wearing painfully high heals and ugly plaid pants because Regina is still evil no matter how invested she is in Henry's happiness," she snorted.

"Or that was just an... expression of the internal conflict between yours and Anna's personalities," Snow shrugged. "According to Archie, anyway."

"Maybe," Emma allowed while looking through stacks of dishes and tea cups. "All I can say is, I bet my sister'll be lucky if a gust of wind hasn't blow her ass overboard on her honeymoon. That heavy corseted dress was probably the only thing keeping her from joining me in the harbor at her wedding."

"Don't be mean about that, Emma," sighed Snow, "The combination of stress, identity confusion, and your magic working through her took a toll on Anna. The disharmonious combination of what she got from you with her curse isn't her fault. _Or_ yours," she amended. "Hopefully, If she hasn't gotten scurvy, Anna will come home looking more like you."

"Hopefully not _too much_ like me," Emma retorted, rubbing her stomach. "There would be all kinds of problems with that, cursed or not cursed, namely the hereditary psychopathy on her hubby's side."

"Now you know Whale said it's impossible to tell if Hook's brain damage is something congenital caused by a genetic defect or the centuries of neurosyphilis," Snow reminded.

"I doubt his brother was avoiding the whore houses and it certainly sounds like their father was a man of ill repute," snorted Emma. "Before coming up with some nonsensical story about being woken from a sleeping curse by true love's kiss from a complete stranger to tell his brain-damaged second son who was stupid and jealous enough to believe that and kill him over it when in reality the guy raped some fourteen year old gypsy girl who'd tried to stab and rob him and then her family left the product of that night of one-sided passion on his doorstep after she offed herself in the shame of her ruined virtue and failed thieving with a curse that forced him to raise little Liam or his dick would fall off... which I guess does make the irony of his death pretty poetic, which maybe those gypsies had foreseen and had a good laugh over... though abandoning the kid on their part both times is pretty awful, so I guess all sides of that family drama were pretty much assholes. But the point is still that Hook thinks true love is some blind magical bullshit that just bestows itself upon strangers and makes them destined."

"Yes, well, lots of people believe that, Emma."

"Including Bawdy Miss Briar Rose," quipped Emma, "who has to live vicariously through the smutty quest of her fictional heroine to explore every sexual partner and position on the misty continent and beyond to find that destined someone because she was essentially betrothed from birth so never had a choice on the matter of true love."

"Which I don't agree with either. But I'm _not_ bringing up the book reading, Emma," Snow reiterated as they moved to a stall with a table of different flower vases. "Aurora obviously isn't ready to reveal herself."

"Seriously, how did we _not_ figure out Aurora was 'Brie Rosar' and how did she come up with that nom de plume anyway? She seems too _ditsy_ to even come up with one that simple. Frankly, I'm surprised she's even that literate. Here I thought those fairies just had her doing needle point all day or something."

"Well, I'm sure she did learn that," Snow considered, "and Ella acted the same back home. It's all about being raised a certain way with certain expectations."

"In other words, women, especially princesses," Emma deduced while examining a turquoise colored vase that matched the fridge, "have to look pretty and act stupid so their princes can feel smart and superior, especially if they're actually stupid... which most of them probably are, what with all the royal inbreeding that'd be even worse if Gold hadn't been swapping in peasant babies every few generations to keep Misthaven from being run by chinless, impotent, weirdoes."

"Something like that," sighed Snow. "I got a crash course in unlearning that as a bandit, particularly hiding out at a brothel. I learned a lot about-" Off Emma's raised brow she soused, " _dirty mind_. I mean about the acts that women put on to please men and that I had been raised by my father to do just that for finding a husband one day."

"Let me guess," Emma inquired, "you vowed you would never change yourself, hide your best qualities so any man could feel better about his - and then broke that promise the very next generation."

Snow let out a heavy sigh. "I should have been a better teacher, role model, and feminist than a brothel madam who encouraged her prostitutes to leave any children they didn't have the manticore venom to abort in the woods for the wolves or fairies, but I got as distracted as Ella and Aurora... just in a different way, in wanting you not to have to through all the trials and tribulations I did to find happiness. I wanted to be the one to help put those scars behind you and give you everything you deserved... I suppose to make up for not being there to prevent the original injuries that caused them."

"I know," nodded Emma and not wanting to continue the heated conversation suggested, "How about we look for that patio furniture?"

* * *

" _Sonofa_ -"

The expletive came from behind them and Emma and Snow turned to find Aurora struggling with a stroller that wouldn't budge after she'd hauled it over the curb onto the sidewalk outside the toy store they'd just exited on Main Street.

Snow left her bags and hurried over to the other princess, announcing, "You probably just accidentally activated the brakes."

"I hate this contraption!" Aurora complained while Snow was fixing the wheel lock. "It's more trouble than it's worth. Dragging it up and down the stairs at Granny's is awful and then trying to unfold it and fold it back up... I'm not sure I'll ever get a hang of how any of this world's wretched devices work."

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Snow insisted. "Strollers are just a particular kind of evil. A few weeks after Neal was born, when I finally took him out on my own, I nearly broke down in tears trying to figure one of these out. Thankfully, Archie was walking Pongo and helped me just when I was about to sit down on the curb in defeat."

"I got me a cheap-ass old, nothing fancy stroller from the eighties at the flea market," Emma declared, pointing to the Suburban, the old stroller visible through the back window with an assortment of lamps, frames, and a fireplace screen and poker set.

"And I still take issue with you strapping your child into one of those death traps, Emma!" Snow admonished.

"Yeah, well, at least she won't get kidnapped while I'm spending twenty minutes distracted by trying to figure out how to get one of those monstrosities into my car," Emma argued back. "The only reason they were invented was so snobby rich moms could have cup holders for their Starbucks and giant water bottles, cellphone holders for their iPhones, racks for their designer purses, yoga mats, and coolers for their kale and quinoa salads and wheat grass cleanses so they can _pretend_ they're actually raising their kids and not high maintenance hoes.

"Besides, I'll strap this kid in one of those baby bandoleers until she's old enough to sit up and not slide out of the belt."

"That's not what they're - never mind," Snow cut herself off, not actually certain what they _were_ called. "Why don't we put this stuff in the car and then walk over to Magical Meats? Regina said it's Yaksha hunting season now and supposedly they make a mean curry with a kale salad."

"Yes on the weird meats. Hard pass on the kale," said Emma.

To Aurora, Snow said, "You can join us. It's just a short ways from the boardwalk. Unless you were planning to go shopping-"

"Oh, no," Aurora cut her off. "I was heading to the park, but I prefer not to walk in front of Rumplestiltskin's shop. The park seems more peaceful, more like home, than this busy town center."

"You'd have a nervous breakdown in New York or Boston," Emma remarked, putting her bags in with her mother's. "The warehouse district is on the other side of the park. We might as well walk together." After a pause to inspect the three month old in the stroller, she inquired, "How's... what's her name again?"

"Phoebe," Aurora answered. "And doing well according to Dr. Whale. Adding that lake water to the injections appears to have cured her...and everyone else afflicted. It's a relief. The 'terrible twos' as they're called here seem trying enough without monthly boughs of feral animal behavior."

"Unfortunately, it doesn't take a Flying Monkey infection for a toddler to throw poop," remarked Snow with a grimace.

"Or to bite," reminded Emma. "Henry had to get a tetanus shot."

"Yes, well, your brother was spending too much time emulating Whelby and David really should have taken that dog for obedience training straight away," Snow said as they walked toward the park. "He's a nice enough dog, but your father's nostalgic for his old collie and let this one pee on one too many a rug before realizing no two dogs are alike."

Emma asked Aurora, "How is your housing situation working out, aside from the strollers-stairs problem? I thought you'd be moving into Zelena's old place already. She leave more boobytraps?"

"Thankfully it doesn't seem so, but she did leave termites," Aurora answered. "We should be able to move in next week. It will be much easier to supervise the community building project from there. And Anton has volunteered to teach our farmers the more productive planting techniques of the giants that he has been showing other farmers who grow crops native to our world. We hope that by next year we'll have a fully functional and sustainable community authentic to The Enchanted Forest, but without certain problems that plagued our kingdom like disease-"

"And illiteracy," Emma interjected. "You should encourage your people to learn how to read and write. Perhaps by, say, attending the Grand Re-Opening of the Library and doing a book reading," she explained and ignored her mother jabbing her in the back.

Aurora blinked at her in befuddlement. "Book reading?"

"You didn't hear? I'm sure there are posters up at Granny's and Belle _does_ eat there all the time. She's been trying to find the anonymous author who won the community amateur creative writing contest to read some of their work for an audience at the Grand Opening. I assume the... tamer scenes though I bet people would stick around for an adults only after party, particularly if there's, say, a new chapter in the works," suggested Emma. "Like maybe Lady Rosalind encounters a bisexual siren and-"

" _And_ it's really no one's business," Snow cut her off, "who the mystery author is and whether or not they're interested in coming..." She trailed off, distracted by a sound. "Is that the fog horn?"

When it sounded again in quick succession, Emma deduced, "The lighthouse keeper probably spotted some idiot sailing drunk. I really wish I had the jurisdiction to give tickets to those ass-"

Before Emma could finish that remark, a loud crunching sound of splinter wood and bending metal made its way from the marina to the park and while Aurora gasped in concern both Emma and Snow groaned.

"There goes the wharf again," sighed Snow. "What we need is a functional harbor patrol operated by someone other than alcoholic pirates. This is the third time in as many months! It's not fair that keeping order should fall on that poor old man in the lighthouse."

"At least I can arrest the idiot if they've grounded their stupid boat," Emma said as the three women turned, taking the path by the zen rock garden that doubled back to the private marina side of Marine Drive and the boardwalk.

They didn't have to walk very far to emerge from the park's trees and have an unobstructed view of the incident. And, of course, it wasn't just any drunk idiot's stupid boat.

Emma's frown turned into a deep scowl as she hissed out, " _Hook_."

* * *

 **AN** : Little Neal's comments are taken from one of those lame articles that come up on your Twitter timeline thanks to people you follow that like to RT non-news crap, in this case "Mom Shares Loving Moment With Her Toddler That Suddenly Gets Very Dark - And We're Weirded Out"... _we_ , I assume, being idiots on the Internet who've never spoken to a toddler. I named Philip and Aurora's daughter "Phoebe" because it's another "Ph" name but also the name of a moon and thus something cosmological. Aurora's literary heroine is named "Lady Rosalind" and her _nom de plume_ is "Brie Rosar" an anagram of Briar Rose, the alias she used in The Enchanted Forest.


	30. Back That Azz Up

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **General Note: Apologies for the long wait and in advance for any spelling or other errors. This chapter took forever to get as right as it was ever going to be and I just couldn't proofread it again.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER THIRTY**

 **BACK THAT AZZ UP**

Emma's frown turned into a deep scowl as she hissed out, " _Hook_."

 _Of course_ it wasn't just any drunk idiot's stupid boat that had chewed through the largest of the private wares adjacent to the Cannery's dry-dock. Large chunks of wood were scattered on the rocky seawall that separated the marina from the boardwalk where people out for a walk on the pleasant mid-spring afternoon were gathering to gawk at the tall-masted ship.

"Maybe he tried to sail sober," Emma jokingly considered on the way to make sure that no one was injured and that the gawking crowd didn't get too close to the damaged wharf... though a few Cannery workers already seemed to be doing that, inspecting the damage to their own dock while cursing at the _Jolly Roger's_ return.

Emma had never liked the ship, and not just because her first time aboard was a very awkward trip back from New York City with Neal, Henry, and a poisoned Rumplestiltskin. Or... maybe that _was_ part of it, Emma considered as her first impression of Hook's baby was a filthier version of a ship she once tried to get Neal to help her sneak aboard in the harbor at Tillamook, Oregon. That was a more-or-less Hollywood prop that she'd recognized from a movie her foster family didn't take her to see when she was eleven, leaving her instead to do all of the house chores and make herself a freezer-burned TV dinner... so she'd had to sneak in later and got caught and then sent back to the group home. Not that she'd liked that family or was even a big fan of the TV series, though at least it lacked the sexism and horny, womanizing captain who must have a some serious mommy issues of the original series... where the alien babes actually dressed up not unlike the woman now striding onto the deck in a very bright, sparkly, and scantily outfit.

It was Aurora's who got out the shock of recognition first with a gasped, _"Mulan!?_ "

Indeed, it was the warrior Emma and Snow had last seen before jumping down a portal making her way toward the damaged bow of the ship... though if Aurora hadn't spoken her name, Emma wasn't certain she would have recognized Mulan, dressed as she was in a sparkly red Arabian-styled halter top and those MC Hammer-like pantaloons that were apparently all the rage in Agrabah. Her wild gesturing in their direction suggested a need for help beyond a fashion un-makeover and the damaged docks.

"Or maybe the pirate in a drunken state attempted to seduce Mulan in disguise and she stabbed him in his little captain with his own hook," commented Aurora, drawing shocked looks from her companions.

"He's my son-in-law," Snow scolded her, though with a slight sigh in her tone. "Be nice."

"He ripped out my heart and handed it to your psychotic step grandmother to turn me into a puppet and then left us to die in a dungeon," Aurora pointed out as they approached, "and only returned my heart to Mulan, by her description, as self-flattering, transparently flirtatious attempt to gain favor with Emma through an act of false chivalry that was meant solely to repaint him as a Cora's unwitting victim rather than the loathsome, unempathetic scum he actually was in the hopes that tactic would make his intended target more willing to submit to his attempt of rape, or what men such as him consider the seduction of a subconsciously willing woman who has been fooled by the morals of society into fearing all notions of sexuality but will be convinced to spread her legs with grand gestures of cliché chivalry because male poets and playwrights say that's what wins a woman's heart when really they are talking about getting a woman into bed and know very little about actual romance - let alone what a woman would even desire in bed."

" _Daaaamn_ ," Emma uttered. "You _have_ to do that reading. I will pay you to publicly come out of the prudish princess closet that you got written into. This is the Sleeping with whomever she wants on her own terms Beauty is the kind of princess the world needs."

Before Aurora could consider a response they heard screams from aboard the ship. Foregoing further approach on foot, Emma used back to transport them all aboard.

"It's... your sister," Mulan got right to the point while leading the way to the captain's quarters beneath the helm, "which I didn't know you had until a few minutes ago. I thought Hook had drugged you and was taking advantage, so I snuck aboard. We ended up in a swordfight... which really isn't important right now," she amended at another scream. "It seems Anna ingested some sort of potion. Hook told me to steer the ship after we went through the portal and-"

"You bloody wrecked it!" the pirate growled, emerging from his quarters.

"Well, if you'd let _me_ stay with your wife and steered the ship instead of being a clingy little worrywart!" Mulan shot back as they all entered the captain's quarters where Anna was wrapped in naught by a bedsheet and clutching her stomach which was expanding beneath her hands but not with the creepy writhing that had occurred with the incubus.

Mulan turned an annoyed look upon the pirate and demanded, "You've let it get this far? Don't you carry squid ink?"

Hook swore and ran over to his sea chest while Snow went to Anna, trying to talk to her, but the blonde was in too much pain and passed out as her husband finally located the bottle of purple liquid and splashed her with the contents, putting a halt to all magic in her system and inducing physical paralysis, leaving Anna shimmering where she'd slumped against Snow's side.

"You could have," Mulan huffed, "told me she had ingested a fetal growth acceleration potion."

"I didn't _know_ she had!" Hook argued. "I didn't even know she was pregnant! Whale was supposed to have used some of his sciencey magic to make sure she couldn't conceive, what with her curse. We _thought_ we'd found a cure."

"And then decided to celebrate from her lack of clothes," Emma noted. "We need to get her to the hospital."

At the scathing look she threw Hook, he defended by picking up Anna, "I didn't know she'd planned to drink it! She must have done when I went to cast the magic bean and bring us here to escape the sandstorm that was about to overtake the harbor. Seemed no reason to delay returning in any case when we had the cure, but I'd assumed she planned to have Regina look it over. It must have been a fertility potion that countered the magic of Whale's charm thing."

"It's called an IUD," sighed Emma and noted the necklace that her sister was wearing appeared to have turned black. "And it appears to have countered the magic of the Blue Fairy's charm thing.. or sucked it all out."

"Perhaps," Mulan considered, "she worried that with magic different in this world it wouldn't work. Ruby mentioned that the rules of magic were less predictable here and seemed to have become increasingly so with each casting of the town's curse."

"It is possible," Snow agreed. "And that is true. The last near end-of-the-world was supposed to have restored some balance, though there are still differences with the native magic now stronger. But I didn't think it had changed the effect of fertility potions or growth acceleration potions. Such pain isn't normal. Is the blood curse?"

"It's not a normal potion," interjected Aurora who'd picked up an empty bottle from the bed. "I recognize the etchings in the glass. It's the same sort that Gothel gave me. Belle researched it and said it was an ancient potion, a sort of... first draft that led to the more commonly used pregnancy-acceleration potions that encompass the entire process, accelerating the physical changes for both the mother and child. The original one wasn't designed for use on humans - or even animals. I think it was designed for crops to combat a famine. It only effects the child and so the mother suffers internal injuries. I only had minor bleeding because I underwent that transformation into a magic beast that could withstand the process, so in an odd way that disease Zelena gave me and my failure to take my medicine to cure it saved me from that other witch's attempt to kill me and cut my child out of my womb for some nefarious blood ritual."

"We definitely need to get Anna to the hospital then," Snow exhaled as they now stood at the bow of the ship. "Can we-"

"No direct magic," Emma shook her head. "The ink will cancel it out. But if we put her in a cargo net, I can use magic to maneuver the winch and lower it down."

A few minutes later on the dock, Snow considered, "Flashbacks to our meeting."

"Your meeting Anna," sighed Emma as she lowered the net, "not your meeting Dad the way you were supposed to. And you definitely weren't supposed to meet Captain Can't Keep His Dick in His Pants before either of us was conceived. Let alone after for the fucking stupid song and dance shit."

"Yes, well, none of us remember that," Snow argued, "and the Blue Fairy turned out to be evil, so-"

"So it's no surprise the bloody charm has no bloody magic left!" growled Hook, retrieving Anna.

"Well, we don't know that," Snow remained optimistic. "If she's really pregnant, both babies could be fine."

"Or one ate the other in the womb because the Blue Fairy decided if we're not going to kiss her ass anymore she'd take away her Good Twin protection pendant magic," Emma countered with pessimism. Then she added, "But then again, with a psychopath for a father, maybe the blood magic would have had hard time figuring out which one is actual the future serial killer and rapist, which could have bought us some time."

"You're a laugh riot as always, Swan," Hook growled at her.

A horn playing "La Cucaracha" from the marina parkinglot interrupted and Snow announced, "That's our Uber."

"U... what?" Hook sputtered, then looked unsettled as they neared the car. "Oh, no, that's the insane car from that old geezer's house! The Crocodile had to do some mojo on it when it tried to attack us outside his house!"

"Well, you were breaking into to quasi-murder him," Emma reminded.

"It's been domesticated," Snow assured. "Somewhat. Just buckle your seatbelt and try not to fart. David farted once on the way home from having Mexican and Christine was _not_ happy."

"Goddamn it, why I did join this family?" Hook grumbled, getting in the back with Anna while Emma got into the passenger seat and Snow hurried around to the driver's side, one of the few people the car would let behind it's wheel.

Leaving Mulan and Aurora to sort out the warrior's story, the had Christine had for the hospital.

"How long does squid ink last?" Snow asked, glancing back at Anna.

"A few hours?" shrugged Hook. "One doesn't generally stick around to find out after using it on an enemy."

"Who gave you this so-called cure anyway?" asked Emma on the way down Main Street.

"No one gave it to us. We found it, just with some help from the librarian at the Palace, one of Jasmine's advisors," he explained. "Jasmine had her researching all of Jaffar's magical objects that he'd kept there during his reign, some of which came from Ali Baba's Cave. She found old books with lists of items, including elixers, and one concerned blood curses. So we set out to the Cave and found it. Then made for the harbor rather than Agrabah when we emerged in the morning and found the sky a rather troubling shade of crimson suggesting a storm brewing on the western side of the gulf. Probably should have anticipated a sandstorm would follow," Hook conceded, "but I'd not sailed those waters other than beneath them with Nemo in centuries."

"So," Emma considered, "either this advisor reached an unfortunately wrong conclusion, or she was actually some acolyte of Jaffar's pretending to have been one of his many victims looking to collect all of his magic to either free him or make her own bid for the throne. And, just for kicks, screw you over in the process?"

Hook grimaced and conceded, "It is possible. She seemed quite smitten with an old...frenemy of mine. I was rather surprised that Sinbad was so willing to let bygones be bygones. He said that he had been enslaved by Jaffar, but perhaps that was a lie..."

"It is rather far-fetched than anyone would want to stop hating you and be bros instead," uttered Emma.

"Hilarious."

"Hilariously _accurate_. And my parents don't count. They've had too many concussions to trust their judgment."

"Emma!" Snow growled. "That is not fair."

"It rather seems fairly accurate, actually," Hook told her, earning a glare from his mother-in-law.

"I'm putting you both at the kiddie table at Thanksgiving!"

"Why do you even want to celebrate a holiday from this world that itself," Hook argued, "commemorates a single day in which two different cultural groups ate a meal together before one went back to attempting to exterminate the other as some divine destiny of an authoritarian religious cult the members of which, if they did not starve to death or die of terrible diseases, were likely to be murdered for accusations of witchcraft or driven out to the bogs to be eaten by wolves or slaughtered by the natives they'd previously persecuted and for such terrible crimes as not wanting to wear a poncy hat or persecute the natives. It all seems extremely hypocritical for the people of this world to celebrate it, so I don't see why anyone in Storybrooke would want to adopt such a nonsensical, revisionist history holiday that paints everything as sunshine and rainb... oh, wait, never mind," he answered his own question, "I see exactly why they would."

"You forgot the unicorn farts," Emma interjected.

"Both of you, shut it!" Snow snapped as they neared the hospital. "Anna needs help, not you two squabbling and making juvenile fart jokes!"

"To be fair, Mom," Emma reminded, "you're the one who brought up farting."

"Aye, you did," Hook nodded.

"Enough! The both of you are not supposed to agree on anything! Go back to giving each other the stink eye!"

Emma rolled her eyes and Hook adjusted his hold on Anna to get his flask out of his pocket and chug a few swallows of rum before Christine arrived at the hospital parkinglot. As the old Crown Victoria swerved to back into the ER bay beside an ambulance, its speakers began blaring:

 ** _"Girl, you looks good, won't you back that azz up?_**

 ** _You's a fine motherfucker, won't you back that azz up?_**

 ** _Call me Big Daddy when you back that azz up_**

 ** _Girl, who is you playin' wit? Back that azz up-"_**

"And you accuse me of being a misogynist," Hook scoffed at Emma.

"Yeah, so maybe Christine should move into your garage?" Emma shot back as they got out.

"A little help here!" Snow called to the paramedics on break.

"Do we have too?" the one eating a banana asked the one playing a cellphone game.

"Seriously!?" Snow gasped.

"Well, it doesn't look like a _medical_ condition," the second one observed.

"GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE AND HELP MY DAUGHTER!"

The two EMTs sighed and opened the automatic doors, one shouting with bored urgency that they needed a doctor. Instead, nurses appeared to guide them into the ER toward a bed.

Emma hung back as she spotted Regina's Mercedes pulling up, the former Evil Queen not the only one to get out. Her frenemy sorceress pal once again dressed snappily in a 1940's suit and hat like some film noir character.

"Miss Swan," Maleficent greeted. "You're looking fertile."

"Unfortunately," replied Emma, "so is my sister. We think she just went about it the stupid way. I assume my mother texted?"

"Unfortunately," nodded Regina. "Which way to the latest Charming Family stupidity?"

Emma entered first, the two sorceresses following her in the direction of Hook shouting for a doctor.

"Drat. I was hoping that one had fall overboard and drown under the wreckage," Maleficent remarked, amending, "actually, I was hoping for both to be honest. Both your sister and brother-in-law are intolerable assholes."

"Yeah, I know. A small part of me was too," admitted Emma. "Well, large part for Hook. Less large part for Anna. Blood and all that."

"Blood is overrated. Aside from blood curses. They are very accurately rated as powerful and dangerous," Maleficent commented as they reached Anna, now laying on a bed still wrapped in her sheet. "Still looks like she's got scurvy, I see. Couldn't be bothered to feed the woman properly on your belated honeymoon, Captain?"

Hook glowered and snarled back, "No one invited you."

"I invited her," Regina retorted. "And you voice-raped one of her best friends and then used her as a pawn to gain sympathy points with your lover after stabbing Maleficent, all while trying to claim you were on the side of the heroes."

"Pretty sure the stabbing part came before that."

"Yes, well, five minutes later you were on the side of the heroes, claiming it was to work off the bad karma of fucking over Henry's father by helping save Henry only to five minutes later scrap that to just trying to fuck me and blatantly admitting it, because why bother with pretenses?" Emma interrupted and crossed her arms. "Thinking Thanksgiving is hypocritical nonsense does not make you not a prick."

"Please," scoffed Regina, "the best reason to hate Thanksgiving is the societal requirement to gather together with one's family of assholes in the middle of the afternoon when no one is actually hungry to stuff yourselves with enough food and wine that you'll be too fat and drunk to successfully murder each other by nightfall. We are not celebrating that holiday this year. I would rather sit on my couch and watch grown men in tight pants incur almost as many brain injuries as you," she directed at Snow.

"One more joke about my concussions and-"

"Not another concussion, I hope?" interrupted Whale after getting out of the elevator.

Snow growled, "No! I do not have a concussion, damn it! Help my daughter, you peroxide perv!"

"I may be a perv," Whale argued back as he put on gloves, "but you're the one who requested I look at your vagina."

"To deliver my baby because the town OBGYN quit to make ugly homemade pottery!"

"All the doctors quit," Whale reminded, "on account of none of them being doctors and the doctors who were midwives back in your land having zero actual useful medical knowledge in those occupations but having gained the hindsight that they probably killed more than half of their patients by not washing their hands after taking a shit. And yet you put your faith in some complete stranger midwife recent immigrant from The Enchanted Forest... then come screaming back to me when your water breaks and it turns out, _big shocker_ , she's an evil family member who wanted to murder your baby in a crazy spell!"

"All right!" Hook huffed. "Enough sarcasm! Fix my wife!"

"We think she ingested that same potion Aurora was given," Emma supplied.

"Well, then," Whale replied, "she's probably got massive internal hemorrhaging and within moments of your shiny magic shit wearing off will go into labor during which her uterus will tear if it hasn't already and if she doesn't bleed to death will die of heart failure from the physical strain for which this particular potion doesn't accommodate considering it was apparently used, historically speaking, for mothers in the late second or third trimester who were ill or injured in some way that they would die before reaching term and so the sole intent of the potion was to accelerate the growth of the child such that it could be surgically removed at term upon the mother's demise. Aurora's very lucky that kid of hers got its head past her monkey-ized pelvis before she got switched back to her dainty little non-full-term-pregnancy-acclimated body or she could be sleeping beauty six feet under."

"You're saying Anna's going to die!?" Snow gasped. "Unless she's given Monkey Herpes?"

"She's already been vaccinated for Monkey Herpes," Whale reminded, "so turning her into a flying monkey isn't an option. I'd say with this shiny stuff going on any magical transformation is out of the question and things will start right back up afterward?"

"Essentially," supplied Regina. "But there's also the blood curse. Perhaps you could at least check on the condition of the children - or child?"

"I _suppose_."

Whale moved an ultrasound wand to Anna's belly and determined, "Blood curse is in effect, but the potion or that charm thing managed to keep the original alive... but in bad shape. Vitals aren't bad. Looks like the heart has already sustained damage. Ordinarly, I'd say you could attempt surgery to repair the damage, but I presume as soon as everything was sown back together and un-shimmery, the curse would just resume destroying it. So it looks like this is all on you idiots to fix with magic. I'll let you can keep her in Maternity, but if bleeds out all over, it's going on your bill."

* * *

Hook paced the waiting room in the Maternity Ward, declaring, "I'm going to get revenge on that lying bitch for doing this to my wife!"

"You did it to her, technically," Regina pointed out. "The woman probably shagging the pirate you pissed off set you both up for this particular fall on your _sword_ as it were. Honestly, can you two go more than ten minutes without having sex?"

"We were celebrating!"

"You celebrate Anna successfully making a pancake by fucking on the kitchen table," Emma reminded. "Celebratory sex loses all meaning after that."

"Whose at the fault doesn't matter right now," Snow reminded. "We have to save Anna _and_ her children. She drank that potion because she wanted to be cured and I'm not going to let her lose her life or her children's because she wanted to be a better person."

"Then we need a potion to cancel the one she drank," Regina stated. "And if Belle's been researching it, chances are-"

"She's already found it," Emma concluded for her. "And then we can focus on what to do about the blood curse since that fairy charm looks fried. I don't suppose recharging it is an option?"

"Since it probably got its power," spoke Maleficent, "from Zeus ejaculating on it just to provide a plot-convenient loophole to the curse for your family's insipid central drama, that's unlikely."

"Fine," sighed Snow and she gestured to Hook. "You stay with Anna and.. eat Jell-O or something while we fix this."

"I can help!" Hook insisted.

"No, you could pretend to help and have an above elementary school reading level when Belle had a brain tumor that made her stupid," Regina told him. "I've learned not to be an impulsive, self-destructive drama queen. You haven't. You'll do Anna more harm than good trying to get involved. And while _Anna_ may have put up with you disregarding such directives and getting yourself involved anyway, such as when you got yourself magically frozen by an ice witch and nearly squished by an Abominable Snowman trying to be a macho hero to save her dainty little self, I'll smash you myself and tell everyone the bad guy did it. And they'll believe me, because they like me more than they like you. I didn't give everyone at Granny's Hepatitis A."

"That wasn't me!"

"It was totally you," said Nurse Ratched in passing. "Not sure if you got it from all the prostitute kissing or all the floor kissing..."

She then told Hook, "You can go and sit with Anna now. Try not to have sex with her while she's unconscious. That sort of thing might be cool in fairytales, but here it's a felony and your sister-in-law doesn't let shit like that slide even if her sister might be freaky enough to enjoy the security video sex tape."

"You're a cold, vindictive bitch, you know that?" Hook growled at the nurse.

"And you liked it when I cupped your balls and had you cough after that car accident," she retorted. "Made you feel like you were right back in Cora's employment. Now, if you'll excuse me, I hate this family and don't want to be around you anymore."

With that, Ratched left the room.

"Well, you can't fault her for honesty," said Emma.

Hook just scowled and stomped off toward Anna's room.

"Off to the Library then," sighed Regina. "And here I was hoping to avoid it until Saturday..."

"Hey, I think I made some progress with Aurora," Emma told her after Regina had poofed them all to Main Street outside the building.

"Well, it might not completely suck then."

"Hey, Neal's worked hard on the art gallery," Emma argued. "And there will be booze and snacks."

"I like art galleries," said Maleficent, "though perhaps not enough to spend an extended period of time in my former prison."

"More like the guard tower," corrected Regina.

Maleficent threw her a dirty look. "We've still not settled the score over that."

"Yeah, I foresee some kinky bondage in your future based on Chapter Ten," agreed Emma. "It's like _Fifty Shades_ without the hot douchebag saving the dimwitted, sexually repressed damsel stereotype. Ironic that Aurora plays that so well..."

They entered the Library and Regina gave a holler, "A little help here!?"

Belle, who was pulling wrapped burgers from large bags of food on one of the tables, gave her an annoyed look. "I'm clearly right here, Regina. You don't have to barge in shouting like the town is on fire. Unless it's on fire?"

"Not that we're aware," said Emma.

"Lovely. I'm starving," chirped Maleficent, taking one of the burgers.

"I didn't say you could have one," Belle shot back at her, then amended, "but I did buy them assuming you all would show up sooner or later since Mulan and Aurora filled me in after it was hard not to notice the ship crashing into the side of town. A phone call or a text message would have been nice, though, instead of just showing up when you happen to need my brain as usual."

"Well, it's Sunday," Regina shrugged. "We figured you'd be having an afternoon delight in the stacks with the Dark One and didn't want to interrupt until your expertise became urgent."

"We don't shag in the middle of the day during business hours like your skanky doppleganger," Belle argued as she unwrapped the paper from her straw.

"It takes two to tango," Regina reminded.

"I considered it valuable research," Rumplestiltskin announced his presence, emerging from the clock tower stairwell. "After all, it wasn't _me_ specifically that Queenie wanted to shag. She just had me in a compromising enough position to not object to putting myself in another compromising position for her pleasure. _You_ may have convinced yourself of this... gal-pal frenemies thing," he gestured flippantly at her and Maleficent, "but the unrestrained, _passionate_ Evil Queen in you was... _frustrated_ that Blondie had left town. With dear, sweet, not-as-honorable-as-he-pretended Robin dead, who would warm her bed at night? The presumed Savior might have had the magical skill to play the part after being the Dark One, but she was too preoccupied pining over her pirate."

"That's great," Snow interrupted. "Can we deal with your apparent 'favor' of playing the Evil Queen's gender-bending sex doll and whatever sexual tension Regina and Maleficent are repressing because of unresolved non-sex-related bondage issues later and focus on saving my daughter and her unborn children?"

"Very well," Rumplestiltskin shrugged. "Have you considered swapping your Evil grandchild's curse with the good potential of some innocent bundle of joy? That worked so well for you before." He snapped his fingers, amending. "Oh, wait, I understand that little family fairy token that unbenounced to you acted as a catalyst for that lunatic sorcerer's spell to ensure zygote Emma became a savior has been completely drained, so I suppose that option is out."

"It was never going to be an option," Snow harumped, flushing as one of her worse offenses was publicly pointed out.

"I certainly wouldn't help if it was," said Maleficent, arms crossed. "I'd just assume let your daughter and her spawn suffer the consequences of the woman's foolishness."

"Desperate souls make foolish decisions," Belle agreed, "but that doesn't mean they deserve to pay the ultimate price and certainly not innocent children. I might be less than fond of Anna and less than less than fond of Hook, but she thought they had a cure that would make her a better person and she got pregnant only to find out it wasn't a cure. _We_ ," she gave her husband a look, "happen to know what that's like. And whether it's evil fairies or blood curses created by evil fairies, I won't stand by and let children be destroyed by magic left over from some immortal power play."

Unwrapping a burger, Rumplestiltskin sighed, "Fine. Save the brats and their pirate whore mother. But I am not providing my magical services. You lot get Belle's research and then figure it out for yourselves. I'm done with snapping my fingers to fix your problems on the presumption there will be some reciprocal exchange such as our next encounter not being one of you attempting to murder me, my wife, or our child because you have a bad hair day and for some reason we're to blame."

"It's true," nodded Belle. "You treat us like shit. I'm doing this for the children. And maybe a little for Anna if she's genuinely trying to become a good person, because I know what it's like to not be yourself without even knowing you're acting like an asshole. But the rest of you who should be self-aware enough to know when you're assholes can still go fuck yourselves."

She gestured over to the pair seated at the table with books, "I don't you. Mulan has always been honorable and Aurora was brainwashed by a patriarchal society into thinking any nonconformist thoughts were the mark of some curse or terrible deviance and is doing her best to overcome that. Plus, they obeyed the 'Keep Your Voice Down' sign when they came in instead of shouting for service."

" _My daughter and grandchildren_?" Snow got them back on point.

Belle sighed. "Fine. We've been looking through some books I had already set aside after Aurora's run-in with Gothel. There is a potion that can cancel it out. You should have most of the ingredients already. It's more-or-less the same as you'd use to counter the more modern potion that doesn't result in the pregnant woman bleeding to death, but requires manticore venom. Of course-"

"That causes miscarriage," Emma recalled. "But manticore blood-"

"Has to be a fully mature manticore," Belle cut her off. "And that wouldn't work anyway because the venom is part of a potion. It's magic to resolve one issue but all magic has a price, a tradeoff. So to deal with _that_ price you need to come with a completely different magical solution, the price of which can been paid forward in some other way."

"Yes, you're right," Emma agreed with a sigh, rubbing her temples. "I remember enough of the squabbling between the Dark Ones in Anna's head. Dark Ones loved to study the loopholes for magical prices to keep extending deals by augmenting this or that just enough."

"I don't suppose both babies could be removed surgically and the growth potion allowed to completion... while using some magic to curb the blood curse?" wondered Snow.

"Even if the one child wasn't too weak to survive," Maleficent reminded, "the curse itself prevents removal of either child... or it would be a far less troublesome affliction. Magically or medically, it will trigger the instant demise of both mother and original child."

"Think of it," Belle interjected, "like a parasite that releases a fatal toxin if one attempts to remove it from the host. A magical parasite is essentially what an Evil Twin is. It feeds off the original, naturally conceived fetus, magically destroying its heart to darken its own and perpetuate the curse. Usually, given it occurs early in gestation, either the Evil Twin physically consumes the original child or it's aborted, both occurring before the mother would usually be aware of anything beyond minor cramping and bleeding that would resolve itself after a week or two and the pregnancy seemingly continue on as normal, the child's magical nature not truly suspected until its malevolent personality truly manifested in early adolescence. Most expectant mothers are not as magically educated or aware as Cora was to realize what her firstborn was and leave her in the woods for the wolves... which sounds horrible, but, really, presuming to know what Zelena would grow up to be? Not as hard to condemn."

"I'm not leaving one of my grandchildren in the woods for wolves!" Snow huffed.

"I wasn't suggesting that," Belle assured. "That was then in _that_ world. This is now in _this_ world. Magic might have reached an equilibrium again that means it can't be manipulated quite as freely as Fiona was able, or that other version of Gothel in the truly fucked timeline where curses could be merged with time travel and the creation of a completely new magical nexus in Seattle, which is utterly absurd and would obviously lead to the destruction of reality even without the idiocy of 'good' cursing _all_ magical realms in the multiverse into Storybrooke and then transporting all of those, mostly ignorant and unwilling individuals, to some dumb coronation party in The Enchanted Forest using far too many already unnaturally hybridized magic bean portals to retain inter-dimensional stability.

"But I digress," she continued after eating a french fry. "We _do_ have the benefit of Storybrooke having far stronger magic native to this world than it did previous to the last apocalypse. Emma's years of growing up here and that magic becoming ingrained in hers allowed that magic to be infused in Storybrooke's Enchanted Forest magic that had previous pushed the native magic out to in an attempt to make this town an miniature Enchanted Forest. Of course, that was never entirely successful. That magic never worked as predictably here. I haven't discerned all the reasons for that, but magic clearly interacts with other forces, forces that are slightly different here, one of them likely being time since travel between here and there seems to be off by about twelve hours. In any case, the curse comes from the Old World. So we can possibly outwit it just enough by drawing on the magic of this world to mask the spells required to circumvent Anna's situation."

"And what spells would those be?" asked Emma.

"We're thinking," Aurora spoke up, "the spell used by Queen Marlena of Eternia."

"I think I've heard of her," Snow considered. "Did she rule an ancient kingdom centuries before the First Ogres War?"

"Recent history in my time," Rumplestiltskin spoke up again, having finished his burger. "She was married to King Randor. Eternia was an island kingdom, one that became collateral damage in The Atlantian War that displaced Midas' ancestors to The Enchanted Forest. Marlena had a twin sister Marlize, presumably not an evil one, but she fell in love with an evil man.. .or rather a man who became evil, Hordak, Randor's personal knight who was seduced by the Dark One of that time."

To Emma, he directed, "You might recall him as the one in the skeleton mask who cackled a lot."

"I already dislike where this is going," Emma groaned. "This is going to involve Etheria and twins defeating the Horde and Skeletor, isn't it?"

"Have you heard the story before?" asked Aurora.

"No, I watched the cartoon show as a little kid," Emma answered, having long since given up being shocked about discovering any mistical story she learned as a kid had truth to it. "I don't remember anything about twin sisters, just the twin kids Marlena had, Adora and Adam."

"Adam was actually Marlize's child," Belle corrected. "When she became pregnant, she worried that a prophesy the Dark One believed in refered to her unborn child and that Hordak, who was secretly loyal to him, would offer the infant up to him to.. I suppose be raised in some pocket dimension like the Black Fairy used to age Gideon quickly to be his apprentice and take over Eternia."

"Ultimately," Rumplestiltskin picked up, "there was either some sort of mix up or some false information bandied about. Probably the Blue Fairy was involved. Regardless, the wrong child was whisked off by Hordak, believing Adora was his, and she was raised into the mind-controlled Force Captain of The Horde while his actual child Adam was left behind to take on the Dark One."

"Which isn't really important here," interjected Mulan. "The spell that Marlena used to transfer her sister's unborn child into her own womb could work to remove the 'Good Twin' if there's a way to fool the blood curse into targeting something else-"

"But not Anna's heart," amended Aurora, "because it sounds like it would automatically turn on her as Evil Twin, continuing the darkening process that was limited by Emma's magic when they were fused."

"I'm thinking a fetch," stated Belle, "like Pinocchio."

"I'm not sure I follow," Snow uttered.

"She means that Pinocchio didn't become a real human boy," replied Regina, "because of any altruism on his part."

"It's speculation, of course," said Belle, "but given the true nature of the Blue Fairy it doesn't make sense that Pinocchio was some therapy project she helped Geppetto with to get over his parents' death that attained its own consciousness through love. Fetches are actually common objects used by fairies, though most don't involve manipulating a human into making one or allowing the magical process to progress so far that the thing made in the likeness of a human that is then magically bonded to a specific person assumes increased human likeness to the point of becoming a perfect doppelgänger of that real person.

"But given Pinocchio's transformation of physical features that are very different in puppet and child-human form," amended Rumplestiltskin, "it's very likely he was created as a fetch and bonded to an actual ginger-haired brat. I say _brat_ because the child must have been awful, more bad potential than good. All of his worst qualities were siphoned off into Pinocchio. And given the role Pinocchio played in Emma's miserable childhood, I suspect it was not the usual motive to ensure some prince grew up to be a good king by siphoning off his bad impulses over time into a puppet. Rather, the Blue Fairy selected some completely unimportant child with naturally psychopathic and addictive tendencies and used him to create her perfect pawn. She probably orchestrated that whole idiotic adventure with the whale to pretend she was using an act of true love to give Pinocchio human form, no different from Hades' heart-weighing con."

"It could work," Maleficent agreed. "A fetch is what a _competent_ person would have used to remove the dark potential from one's unborn child rather than trusting some sketchy wizard that a dragon fetus would work... even when it was born of a shapeshifting human, which any competent person would consider meant it also was a shapeshifter... not that it would excuse doing such a thing to an actual dragon, which are regal creatures with heartstrings naturally resonate in true love magic, so one would essentially be creating that zombie dragon from _Game of Thrones_ from birth that would grow up to lay waste to one's entire kingdom."

"Okay, I get it, that was not a smart move!" Snow groaned. "I should have had Geppetto carve a puppet from that stupid Tree of Wisdom or whatever."

"That does present a problem," Regina remarked. "There are no magical trees in this world. As far as I know, there are no magical trees left in The Enchanted Forest. That wardrobe was made from the last one and Princess Klutz here set it on fire, reducing it to ashes."

"Because of your bitch mother," Emma reminded, "and can we get back to the part where you want me to carry my idiot sister's potentially-homicidal-even-without-a-curse kid?"

"It's not an ideal solution," Rumplestiltskin shrugged, "but you _are_ identical and just as that was enough to confuse the Dark One's magic on determining which child belonged to Marlize, it could fool the blood curse enough not to target the child if you're carrying it with the added benefit of your true love magic being a natural ointment to curse-related cardiac issues. The real trick would be swapping that child out and a fetch into your sister's womb without triggering any fail-safes in the magic. But the squid ink that halts magical processes combined with the manticore-venom potion halting the exiler and inducing labor could be enough magical chaos to allow the plan to work. The amount of venom is small, not enough to be an irreversible process without a shot of manticore blood to the heart and some specific runes on the fetch should be able to draw that magic away from the fetus. If not, I suppose the Good Twin could always be transferred back to Anna's belly after the Evil one aborts."

"Neither of my grandchildren are dying today," Snow insisted. "I failed my daughters. I won't fail another generation. They're both going to live, and that damned blood curse is not going to turn one into a time-traveling villain who helps destroy the world."

"Are you sure that's not just _false_ hope talking?" Regina quipped.

"I swear," sighed Emma, "only my sister would be so unoriginal and narcissistic that she'd name her kid 'Hope'... while she was going around crushing the hopes of others, including Henry's, with all her shitty behavior."

"Yes, well," Snow huffed, "I still think it's sweet and you should consider it as at least a middle name, Emma."

"I am not naming my kid after my psychotic niece who destroyed reality because her soul was ripped out of Heaven and into a cursed bloodline that drove her insane. That's worse than you naming my brother after my just-died lover and Zelena naming her baby after the guy she raped to make it combined!"

"It does seem rather poor taste," agreed Maleficent.

"There's still the issue of magic wood," Belle pointed out, "and I don't mean that Centaur's erection in Chapter Five of Aurora's smut novel."

"I.. what?" Aurora sputtered. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Please, dearie," Rumplestiltskin told her, "everyone here, save your old traveling companion, knows you're the ghost writer of those books. August sold me his typewriter after his father's passing. You sent some minion to purchase it despite claiming a distaste for technology. I found it during my exploration of your camp, hidden from your sweet, gullible prince who represents the husband that your heroine fled marrying for though he was handsome and had pleasured her on their wedding night proved himself to be the usual closed-minded sort who expected Rosalind to spend her days doing needlepoint and gestating their children rather than taking an active role in ruling their kingdom or exploring the interest in swordplay she had found in tandem with an interest in the mysterious female mercenary who had captured a treacherous bandit at their engagement ball."

"Regina emailed me the novel after the barrier spell dissipated," imparted Maleficent. "I read the entire thing on the flight from Monaco. A little rough around the edges, but certainly a revolutionary work for our world's patriarchal social structure that paints women as brood mares and those who seek to have power over their own bodies and choice in love and lovers as vile witches and villains while the men who rape and plunder, if they have a pretty face or enough gold, are playful rogues."

"It is true," agreed Regina.

"Sadly," nodded Snow.

"Which is why," Belle told Aurora, "you have to read your book at the party next Saturday. Come on!" she encouraged, "I'll show you the reading room."

"I... um...?"

"What about the magical wood?" Maleficent wondered as Belle seemed to have decided she was done with helping them, which was understandable.

"Oh, I'm sure," Regina considered, "Snow kept that broken sapling. She's insufferably nostalgic like that."

"Would it work?" Snow asked, ignoring the insult.

"Well, if you and Charming hadn't been hoodwinked into recovering it in order to be made public laughing stocks for your pitiful attempt at heroism by having it snapped in front of the whole town like a stale Slim Jim," replied Rumplestiltskin, "it would work a lot better. But each half should have retained some true love magic and as it has darkness in it from sprouting through the fresh corpse of a bloodthirsty assassin, that should more accurately mimic an actual child with potential for both."

He waved toward the door, "Now take your books and don't let the door hit your ungrateful asses on the way out!"

* * *

August W. Booth, sometimes still known as Pinocchio, stood at his father's work bench looking at the broken twig laying on the handkerchief Snow White had presented it in. Beside it sat the baby doll Geppetto had never finished that had been gathering dust on a shelf with the dwindling company of clocks that he'd had been trying to complete many months after they should have been hanging on people's walls or perched upon their mantles.

Most days August regretted giving away his typewriter. Every day he missed his father and regretted never having been the son that Geppetto wanted him to be, risked everything for to put Pinocchio in that wardrobe. He'd failed, though. He'd failed Emma and in doing so had failed to aid his father in getting any absolution from Snow White and Prince Charming for perpetuating the Blue Fairy's lies. Geppetto had died knowing that any forgiveness the couple gave him was entirely unearned.

August felt the same when it came to their family's next generation. He'd abandoned Emma more than once, manipulated her into making bad decisions because the outcome was easier for him - and he'd done the same with Neal, had let Pan manipulate _him_ as he'd previously let King George and Prince James do, playing an unwitting hand in the murder of David's father for being a shitty little chump.

He'd thought he was playing Baelfire and making all the right calls to get Emma home in the state of mind she needed to be, untethered to this world because he'd never felt connected to it. But he'd been a pawn himself, Pan's, Blue's, George's, even that Tamara bitch, and even when he convinced himself of his good intentions they always paved the way to someone's personal hell because he couldn't even stick to the plans he made, led astray again and again by some debauchery, only sucked back into the role he was assigned when it suited saving his own lying ass.

Emma had called him an ass.

If there was anyone the blonde princess loathed more than Killian Jones, it was August W. Booth, this he knew. They hadn't gotten any alone time since she was split from her twin sister, but he'd shared enough awkward space with her in the company of others to know the few biting words she'd sent his way came from deep wounds, scars she'd been carrying her whole life but had only recently learned were partially his making.

With a sigh, August glanced at the carved wooden swan on the shelf where the doll had been. Apparently, Anna had given it to Emma before departing on her honeymoon since the gift was intended for her sister... and since, while Anna might have appreciated the gift from him and been apathetic about the past history between them that spawned the 'Swan' surname she'd had no problem giving up when wedding Jones, Emma had a deep and complex connection to the name that with his revelation felt like a betrayal and a core component of her identity based on a lie, the unforgivable conning of a little girl to keep her easily found while costing him nothing. So, of course, Emma had returned the swan carving one day while he was trying to fix the nulepost at her new home, telling all of that in not so many words, but enough that he could fill in the blanks.

Apparently, like the pirate, August's Wish Realm version had a far better person, the sort of person Emma wished he could have been, capable of conscience and change, instead of being driven by selfish desires in an unbreakable cycle no matter how disgusted in himself he was every time he broke a promise.

August was trying to keep his promises, but part of that was not making many. He went to his twelve step programs and on really bad days he tried therapy with Archie, even though their complicated history usually led to a mutual self-loathing society meeting of two. He tried to stay sober and celibate, and at least gambling wasn't as much of an issue since Hook's illegal operation had been shut down.

He worked on Geppetto's unfinished projects in between simpler new ones like signage for shops on Main Street that were looking to break free of the boring, unified style that the Curse had slapped up everywhere in that deceptively cheerful font that labeled everything "Storybrooke" this and that. And until recently doing basic trim and molding work at the Library and at Emma's home - at least when Emma wasn't home and Neal was feeling generous enough to let him contribute some gesture of reparations for destroying the happy beginning they should have had.

All of that felt like a lot, some days more than he could handle with the basic training of a child and a few months of refresher as an adult, a stranger looking for a hobby to cure writers block... and then a short while again as a kid, back to resuming that training without any memory that three decades had passed... and back to an adult, to Geppetto's grown son trying not to revert to being a fuck-up only to end up back to his boozing, whoring, gambling ways after his father's sudden passing. Archie had gotten him back on the wagon, but it had been a bumpy ride, one better suited to the aforementioned muscle-memory busy work than something like this that required actual thought, finesse and skill.

Geppetto and been a master carpenter, had a skill with work-working that went beyond furniture, signs, and clocks. He'd carved toys for Emma's nursery along with the cradle - and did so again for Neal... sadly neither of his endeavors making it to this world with their respective curses... probably because of the magical wood.

Why exactly this sapling had come through, August couldn't say. Perhaps it was because Regina's intention when casting the Dark Curse was to spite Snow White (and Prince Charming) and because the daughter and product of their true love was written into the spell to break it. Regardless, it was a sad little sprout. By some rudimentary math it had only grown about three years before the Dark Curse had trapped and stunted it... and then it had either gone back with all of them or remained in here during that year... though had Storybrooke itself even still existed without anyone in it or had it vanished entirely?

August had never bothered to try wrapping his mind around the illogic of curses and magic. If he had, his own existence would have probably given him a complete mental breakdown. But whatever the case, the sapling didn't seem to have grown as much as it should have - perhaps a result of Zelena's magic infecting the timeline so it otherwise would have been bigger and stronger, the Evil Queen unable to break it so easily... if that corporealized phantasm of an alternate personality would have even existed given the Land of Untold Stories was apparently a paradox-funneling construct of Zelena's time travel meant as a band aide to keep reality from falling apart the instant she, Emma and Hook got back to the future.

Magic was complicated and confusing. Carpentry was supposed to be easy and relaxing... or at least relaxing. Combing the two when August was still fumbling through an apprenticeship of YouTube videos and episodes of New Yankee Workshop was not helping keep the wagon stable.

But this was Snow White's request to help save her grandchildren from death and deviance and give the daughter who'd sort of befriended him a chance at still finding the kind of normal life her sister who hated him had despite him. Given that, August didn't have much of a choice but to try inlaying the dead, broken remnants of true love into the abandoned project his father had begun with the joyful enthusiasm he did every project, big or small.

* * *

The Maternity Ward at Storybrooke General was busier than it used to be. Under the Dark Curse it was as vacant as the old "closed down" Psychiatric Wing. Children conceived in the few months after it was broken, before the next was cast, had been born - sadly for some and the women who bore them - back in The Enchanted Forest. It was only after Snow White's casting brought them back that business had picked up to something resembling a normal town's birthrate.

The real "baby boom" had come the previous fall, the crop of kids conceived in celebration of Fiona's defeat under the delusion that it was the last calamity the town would face. Emma Jones had initially thought herself one of those happy new expectant mothers only to have a juvenile incubus rip its way out of her abdomen in the middle of a pregnancy announcement party at Granny's. The resulting damage to her uterus had made subsequent attempts to conceive unsuccessful... that, and her unconscious popping of birth control pills caused by her subverted parasitic twin sister who loathed her lover and didn't want to see any progeny result from that sordid "romance".

Dr. Whale frankly agreed with that assessment. But he wasn't a trained psychologist and for some reason people around here trusted the curse-trained psychologist who'd decided to become an insect after being complicit in a murder conspiracy gone wrong.

"How are Mr. and Mrs. Jones?" Whale inquired of Nurse Ratched as he made his rounds, steering clear of the blonde's room since getting her attached to all the necessary monitors, not that they functioned well with that magical magic-halting forcefield of squid spunk.

"Mrs. Jones is still unconscious and sparkly," Ratched answered. "Last I saw before lunch, Mr. Jones was stress-eating deconstructed Jell-O shots while gazing creepily at the newborns in the Nursery. I do hope that if the children survive those two are declared emotionally unfit to be parents. As much as I question the intelligence of Snow White and Prince Charming, their parental incompetence and child neglect at least comes from a good place. _I_ would never be selfish enough to bring a child into this world as measure of self-worth and happiness."

"Yes, well, you are an unusually self-aware psychopath, Nurse Ratched," Whale told her, "and let me remind you that we do have security cameras everywhere now, so there will be no more bumping off patients, even if they are villains, or you'll have to find yourself a new occupation as a lumberjack."

"I don't see how that translates," she huffed.

"Yes, well... other people who watch TV instead of making a collection of taxidermy squirrels would get it," stated Whale.

"The old Psych Ward was infested with squirrels and it's the only hobby I'm good at," Ratched argued. "If you'd just let me donate them to the Pediatric Ward-"

"So the children would all be so traumatized that they'd need to be admitted to the new Psych Ward?" Whale cut her off. "You're lucky I didn't fire you for that pretend haunting with the squirrel blood after the City Council voted to renovate and reopen the Wing."

"Yeah, yeah," Ratched grumbled. "I have to check in on the anti-lovebirds again. Can't imagine that squid ink will last much longer and then it'll be a hemorrhaging mess of human blood, and you know Leroy will bitch for a week about it. Why that Dwarf doesn't just quit..."

"Quitting doesn't seem to be a quality they're good at," shrugged Whale. "Some kind of behavioral imprinting by the fairies, I suppose that overrides any kind of true individual thinking left over in the biological material of the original Dwarf corpses that they reanimated in giant egg artificial wombs to be their diamond mine slaves. All the Dwarf mining skills, none of the Dwarf independence that got them involved in and killed off in a war with the Fairies, Giants, and Dragons."

"Actually been reading up on Enchanted Forest history?" Ratched asked, sharp brow raised as she filed her charts at the desk.

"I read up on it during the miserable year I was stuck there," he answered, "dealing with morons like Snow White and Prince Charming who didn't even figure out she was pregnant until she looked like she'd swallowed a cantaloupe. Sad that _they_ are the better parenting option in any case."

"Well, for the kids, better them than the Sheriff. Auntie Em would probably throw them in the lake."

"Given their genetic history? Might not be the worst thing."

"True," Ratched agreed as she finished. After a pause, she wondered, "Do you suppose this town's residents ever consider that their only real medical staff loathe the majority of them and lack the empathy to give a shit about the rest?"

"I think as long as we don't kiss the royal family's entitled asses and don't share at cocktail parties the objects we remove from their own, they could care less how much we care," Whale shrugged.

"I suppose. You should see what Mrs. Purbeck stuck up there. She _said_ one of her deplorable brats did it while she was taking an Ambien..."

"I'm sure," Regina interrupted, "she did it. She's had so many kids that sticking anything up her vagina is probably like putting a hotdog in an elevator shaft. At least that hysterectomy seems to have worked. Twenty-eight years of enduring a screaming baby chewing on her tits while trying to get shoes was not my idea of a happy ending. I should have cut off Rumple's balls for helping that couple with their fertility issues."

Hands on her hips, Regina changed the subject, "Now, I need one of your labs to brew a potion. And I understand Sparkles has therapy animal training this afternoon?"

"Well, I normally don't lend out my labs," Whale replied, "but if it will get your step-granddaughter out of here sooner, I suppose I can make an exemption and lend out the one the down the hall opposite the nurse's break room. And Anton visits the Peds Ward on Sundays, though you might check the Cafeteria. The staff keeps the overripe bananas."

Regina nodded and strode off with a purpose. Ratched sighed and shook her head, thinking aloud, "She was a lot more fun when she was evil."

"Everyone's more fun when they're evil," shrugged Whale. "Trying to be a legitimate doctor and not practice necromancy on the side is killing my soul."

"You did create a friend for that demon car," Ratched reminded. "But was both nice and evil of you."

"It really was," Whale considered, "but now my auto insurance premium has gone up."

"No nice evil dead goes unpunished," sighed Ratched, taking another armful of charts to resume her rounds.

* * *

"I got the manticore venom," Emma announced, entering the lab that Regina and Maleficent had taken over. "Mom's with Anna. Said she'd text if the squid ink starts wearing off. August is going to bring the fetch when he's done. How's the potion?"

"Almost finished," Regina answered. "It just has to brew a bit longer and the manticore venom doesn't go in until right before the injection or it degrades and turns into some useless party drug like that Jack idiot made."

She adjusted the flame on the Bunsen burner and continued, "You should get ready. Maleficent already drew the necessary runes on Anna. She'll do the corresponding ones on you."

"I like to think," said Maleficent, "if I hadn't been cursed into dragon form under the Library," she glared at Regina, "I would have been a tattoo artist. Have a seat and lift up your shirt."

"I'm still not sure I'm comfortable with this," Emma said as she did.

"No one should be comfortable carrying Hook's child," shrugged Regina, "but that kid is also your nephew... apparently. As much as I despised my sister and what she did to Robin, I couldn't throw the product of her raping him to the wolves."

"You did get to enjoy her being erased from existence, though."

"That is true," Regina conceded. "Spared her the misery, I suppose, of her soulmate not existing anymore. And the therapy of dealing with being a product of rape and her father murdered by her mother's lover, the Lord of the Underworld, all because some idiot wanted to bring the boyfriend that she barely knew and was also a rapist and murderer back from the dead."

"Yeah, well, you're also a rapist and murderer," Emma reminded.

"But she's a well-dressed one," Maleficent said as she dipped a brush in color-changing that bubbled in a flask. "I only associated villains worthy of their own fashion line. Granted, I did go through a phase when I didn't bath or wash my hair for weeks at a time after my lover died bringing an asshole prince's brat into the world because she chose conformity over love. But apart from that period of depression, I pride myself on always looking _smashing_ as Cruella would say."

"Cruella pretended to try to murder my son," Emma stated, but amended, "though she did sort of help me out in The Underworld. I guess that Isaac asshole altered her personality for kicks."

"Authors were generally assholes," stated Maleficent as she painted strange shapes on the exposed sphere of Emma's belly. "I include Disney in that. And that new imagining of my story where I get wings hacked off and it's all a rape metaphor? What the fuck is that about? And I consider Aurora my kid? Sure, my ex-lover birthed her, but she was always an insipid little shit thanks to her fairy godmothers, not some unofficial godchild of mine that frolicked in fields with me."

"Aurora's not so bad," Emma shrugged.

"Yes, yes, she wrote a smutty book," Maleficent nodded, "but if she doesn't publicly cop to it, then it's as meaningless as Leah's devotion."

As Snow walked in, Maleficent warned, "And don't you dare say that's a good name. No more of this naming children after dead lovers."

"Or fake movie princesses used as bad covers during time travel adventures," said Emma. "It was my evil niece's middle name _and_ made it sound like some weird nostalgia where Hook wanted to fuck his own daughter."

"Fine, whatever," Snow waved her off. "The ink is starting to wear off."

"I thought you were going to text?"

"I needed a break from Hook. He's having one of those desperate weepy fits he used to have early in their relationship," she sighed. "I'd forgotten how annoyingly juvenile that is. I swear, his emotional development must have stopped at the age his father sold him into child slavery."

"Yes, that is probably a legitimate psychological diagnosis," Maleficent stated. "That and the neurosyphilis. I'm _almost_ done."

"It's rather pretty," Snow considered of the runes.

"Yeah, well, we'll see how pretty it is when it stretches to accommodate my sister's kid," Emma grumbled, "and I have to start wearing all the ugly stuff I reserved for the last month of my pregnancy two months early."

"I'm sure I can alter something fashionable for you," Maleficent assured. "I amassed quite the wardrobe on my fashion world tour... none of which Lily was interested in," she sighed. "She may look like herself again, but she still dresses like a dyke with a bike. Which is still better than," she gestured to Snow, "your cashmere and Mom jeans or your other daughter's neurotic style. Regina would send me pictures. That black top with the embroidery looked like the floral bouquets blew up at a Norwegian funeral. The jacket also with flowers? Was she trying to cospay a 1950's folk singer? And that nun-necked number was just unforgivable. Don't get me started on the wedding dress..."

"Fiona burned mine and we didn't have a lot of options!" Snow argued. "It was a princess dress from this world, from a movie that I saw and my daughter had a lot more on her mind than her prefect wedding dress... and was apparently too preoccupied to tell me that she really didn't care for it... or the decorations... and the venue happened to be where Hook had tried to commit suicide to manipulate her when they were Dark Ones which I had no idea, or that it was a location that didn't hold good memories for her because she was the wrong one of my daughters. Can we please get back to saving the one that's in danger in dying now and making rude sartorial commentary later?"

"Fine," sighed Maleficent.

"The potion is ready," interjected Regina. "We just need Pinocchio's dolly."

"He texted that he's on his way," Snow replied, amending, "Also, David texted that they're on their way, but they had some engine trouble with the truck. I didn't go into specifics about the medical situation."

"Yeah, I just told Neal that my sister is a horny idiot," shrugged Emma. "I guess I should get into a lovely backless gown and wait for the puppet who ruined my childhood and my first relationship to get here with another puppet to stick in my sister's uterus so can play surrogate with her actual kid, the less likely to be a psycho one."

"Well, look at it this way," Regina told her. "Hook will owe you for the rest of his unnaturally long life."

* * *

"Twenty bucks," said Violet as she returned a book and was clued in on the current insanity of Henry's family, "Hook makes some dirty comment about getting Emma to carry his baby."

"No one is stupid enough to take that bet, dearie," Rumplestiltskin argued as he finished a second cheeseburger.

"It does seem like the sort of thing Hook would say," Aurora agreed with a look of disgust.

"The real bet," interjected Belle with a half smirk, "is will he make the joke before or after?"

"I'm in!" the teen nodded. "I say before. That perv totally hit on me when I was dating Henry!"

"He has a type," grimaced Belle.

"Hit on?" asked Mulan.

"Made sexual advances toward," clarified Belle.

"He never 'hit on' me then," shrugged Mulan.

"Because you project a terrifying mix of Lesbian and the physical skill to kick his sorry ass," Rumplestiltskin told her. "There is nothing a man like Hook fears more than a woman who is biologically immune to his 'charms' and could easily murder him for trying to seduce her."

"What about Chapter Seven?" asked Aurora. "Is that one too indecent for public narration? And I will bet after, that his insufferably desperate obsession with his wife will temporarily curb his disgustingly predictable pattern of making inappropriate remarks about intercourse and procreation with the woman he thought was his wife."

"It'll be an adults only evening reading," Belle explained, "so whatever chapter you think best encompasses the theme of the book. But if you could throw in an excerpt from any upcoming chapters, that would be great."

"Totally!" Violet nodded. "Is Rosalind ever going to cross paths again with that forest nymph that gave her directions and a hand-job?"

"Should you really be reading that?" Belle asked her. "You're fourteen."

"Yeah, and I almost had sex with Henry to prove to myself I wasn't into girls," argued Violet. "Plus, I could have totally been married off in Camelot if my father had allowed it."

"Child brides are a dime a dozen back home," agreed Rumplestiltskin, reminding Belle, "How old were you when your father first tried to marry you off? Fifteen? Sixteen?"

"Fifteen," sighed Belle. "But apparently word kept getting out about my maternal line suffering psychotic breaks and suicidal behavior, so he ended up settling for Gaston who was already a psycho prone to sadistic behavior and I suppose figured I'd pop out the perfect nutter for him before eliminating myself from the equation so he wouldn't have to do it himself."

"Gotta admit there's a weird logic to it," shrugged Violet, checking out a new book, then departing with a, "Peace out, weird old people!"

"I'm not old!" Aurora grumbled. "I'm twenty-one. That's at least two years from being considered a spinster if I wasn't married."

* * *

With some reticence, Emma had laid down in the second bed in Anna's room. Trying to look optimistic and supportive, Snow adjusted the sheet and Emma's hospital gown to expose her abdomen as she'd already done for Anna who'd apparently regained consciousness at some point but couldn't open her eyes or move her mouth until the squid ink's effects began to wear off.

"...hurts... more," she managed through magically clenched teeth.

"The potion's taking effect again," Regina surmised.

"It'll be all right, luv," Hook assured, squeezing her hand.

"I'm here!" declared August, arriving with the doll.

" _Finally_ ," Maleficent uttered and took it, flipping it on its back and painting magical runes there. "Give it a second to soak in..."

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" Anna suddenly screamed, the purple shimmer winking out.

"Do something!" wailed Hook.

"Oh, shut it!" Regina growled while she used an eyedropper to add the manticore venom to her flask of potion then quickly sucked it into a syringe. She then stuck it into Anna's IV and her abdomen ceased swelling. Though moments later she cried out again in pain.

"Just fucking do it," groaned Emma.

The spell had been well choreographed by the two sorceresses. The runes on Anna's stomach, Emma's belly, and the doll all glowed in some kind colorful Simon Says like pattern. Then Emma gasped in discomfort at the sudden added weight in her belly and as it rapidly swelled with her stretching womb to accommodate a second child. She was so focused on her changing body that she barely noticed the doll vanishing in a swirl of purple, instead watching the runes seem to seep into her skin and disappear.

In the adjacent bed Anna was still in greater distress, Hook being of little help in his panicky demands that someone do something so Snow shoved him out of the way and rubbed her daughter's back, telling her to breath and that everything would be all right despite the blood seeping through the sheet between her legs.

The pain and the bleeding did stop as her runes disappeared and Anna fell back against the pillows looking weak.

"This is the first of several healing potions," Maleficent said, handing her a cup, "to reverse the damage to your heart and other internal tearing and bleeding from the effect of the not-a-curse-cure you ingested. You'll need to be closely monitored for several days to see how effective the decoy fetus is at fooling the blood magic as well as how effective the implantation spell is at integrating it into your womb without medical complications. Same goes for your sister without the 'decoy' part and I'm sure Whale can be convinced to check its heart and if Emma's magic is reversing the damage - or if it's too late and the child's fate has already been sealed and it needs to be removed."

Maleficent retrieved her jacket from the peg by door. "Now, I require some Netflix and chill. Feel free to call Rumplestiltskin instead of me if there are complications. I intended to be quite drunk until morning."

"Sounds like a plan," Regina agreed.

Hook just pulled Anna into a passionate embrace and kissed her deeply, making everyone else uncomfortable. After he'd finally let her go and Snow was calling for Dr. Whale, the pirate gave Emma a leering look and declared, "Looks like I got you to carry my child after all, Swa-OWE!"

Snow had whacked him upside the head. "You know, whenever you think you should say something, Killian, you really shouldn't!"

Emma glared at him. "Thanks, Mom."

"Yeah, even I'm not that creepy, man," said August, holding up his hands and leaving the room.

"Idiot," Regina groaned on her way out as well, past Henry who'd arrived and was holding up his phone. "Documenting this stupidity?"

"Yeah, for Belle's lechery pool on when Hook would say that. Violet was at the Library and texted me. Am I staying with you tonight or are you gonna shag Maleficent?"

"Henry!"

He shrugged. "What? Robin's been dead for ages and let's be honest, you barely knew him, Mom. Plus, he was kind of dishonorable but totally trying to sell it as heroism unlike his unapologically dishonorable Wish self, so him and your evil half were a much better couple when you think about it. You know Maleficent. She can spice up your black pantsuit collection. She can turn into a dragon. Her daughter can also turn into a dragon. She has Cruella's sweet car. There's really no downside to her being your girlfriend."

Regina sighed. "Just go see your mother and be marginally nice to your aunt. You can stay with your grandparents. And _not_ because I am going to shag anyone. I need a hot bath and quiet which I know you will be incapable of after a weekend without video games."

"That is true."

"Also, I need to read your report as I don't trust your father or grandfather's proofreading with their respective complete lack of education," Regina amended, holding out a hand.

Henry sighed and removed a folder from his backpack, handing it over before entering the room and going over to his mother who was griping at his grandmother fussing over fixing the hospital blanket over even more swollen stomach.

"Just stop! I feel like an over-inflated balloon, Mom! Tucking me is not helping! And Whale is going to have to do an ultrasound anyway! _Henry_!" she noticed him.

"Hey, Mom," he smiled awkwardly. "I heard about the whole thing with Aunt Anna. So... this is... weird... though I guess not weirder than most stuff in our family."

"Pretty much," Emma sighed. "Did you have fun on your camping trip?"

"The camping part, not the report writing part, yeah," Henry shrugged. "Dad and Grandpa managed to mostly get along, so that's progress."

"Snow!" David exclaimed, rushing in, carrying a confused toddler. "I'm sorry. Retrieving Neal took longer than I thought. He really wanted cookies and wouldn't stop wailing-"

"It's fine. Everyone's fine, Charming!" Snow assured, taking a chocolate-stained Neal from him. "It was touch-and-go and we're waiting for Whale to do medical checkups, but the magic seems to have worked."

"Anna!" David scolded, "this is not how our family reunion was supposed to go!" He kissed her forehead. "But I'm happy for you."

"And me?" beamed Hook, hopeful.

"I'm tolerant of your presence in my daughter's life," he replied, "because I am a far better person than you deserve for a father-in-law. But don't think I'm happy that you got my daughter pregnant in a way that endangered her health because you trusted some random Librarian about a treasure map."

"I didn't _know_ Anna would drink it _after_ we shagged!" Hook wined.

"Doesn't matter, _mate_ ," Neal stated from the doorway, "their little princesses are always the innocent party. That's how it works."

Hook stared and then croaked out, "How the bloody hell are you alive?"

"How you alive?" Neal retorted, "Self-absorbed gods using us as their pawns. Difference is, I got revived because Zeus broke his end of the deal. You got revived cause he saw a little bit of himself in you - and by that I mean a narcissistic dick who got away with rape and murder and was still adored by brainwashed fangirls and wanna-be fanboys."

"I am _not_ his wanna-be fanboy," David argued.

"You let your grandson drive stick shift when he was twelve down a crowded street in the middle of the day to prove you were as cool as him," Whale pointed out as he stepped in. "I had an ER full of broken limbs and concussions because your insecurity."

"Yes, well, that's not the same as being a fanboy!" David huffed.

"No, you just wanted to be a bit more of a bad boy like your brother," Anna told him. "Which isn't a bad thing. Being too good all the time is boring. I thought it was badass when you threatened to kill Regina after the wraith thing and when you were ready to slit that evil mermaid's throat."

"Both of which would have been wrong," Snow told her. "But we'll discuss that later, young lady."

Neal went over to Emma as Whale set up the ultrasound to check Anna first. As Henry joined the group to video what was sure to be a very weird sonogram, he took a seat on the edge of her bed and put an arm around her. "I'm sorry I wasn't here, Em."

She shook her head. "It's fine. You helping keep Henry from getting held back a grade. That's more important. I'm just sorry you got back to your wife looking nine months pregnant and carrying your dickhead stepfather's baby thanks to my sister. And did you know that the whole He-Man and She-Ra shit is real?"

"Yeah, a little before my time. I remember hearing the stories," Neal replied and shrugged, amending, "In the grand scheme of things it's no big deal, Em. As long as you and our kid are healthy. Besides, I'll make the most of annoying Hook talking about getting to have sex with you while you're carrying his kid."

"So like you're going to give his kid a concussion with your dick, huh?" Emma rolled her eyes, snorted, and shrugged concluding, "Can't say I disapprove. It'll totally annoy him. And if you actually still are interested in sex, I'm sure I won't disapprove of that once I feel less bloated. I'm gonna need a tub of cocoa butter... though at least I don't have Anna's gnarly stretchmarks, so that's something."

"...still not weirder than that thing a patient I can't divulge inserted into his or her butt," said Whale.

"Poop comes out of butts and smells like farts!" exclaimed little Neal.

"I think that about sums up the day," decided Emma.

* * *

 **AN** : The _Jolly Roger_ has been portrayed by the _**Lady Washington**_. According to Wikipedia, the ship is a reproduction of a vessel that was part of the Columbia Expedition and left Boston Harbor on October 1, ship was named for Martha Washington and participated in the maritime fur trade. She was the first American-flagged vessel to round Cape Horn, the first recorded vessel to make landfall on the Oregon coast near Tillamook, Oregon, and possibly the first nonnative vessel to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. After a change in captain, the ship was refitted in Macau as a brigantine and was lost at the mouth of the Mestizo River, near Vigan, northwest Luzon in July 1797. Based in the Pacific Northwest, the replica ship that was used on _OUAT_ has been in a number of film and TV productions, including in 1994's _Star Trek: Generations_ where it was used as the original _USS Enterprise_ in the time travel adventure. Emma's rumination about _Star Trek_ is a nod to Morrison playing James T. Kirk's mother in the 2009 film. **"Back That Azz Up"** is by Juvenile; there's a car commercial that plays the radio-friendly "Back That Thang Up" version. Dr. Whale is, of course, referencing the awful series finale of _**Dexter**_ with that lumberjack remark. And the bit about taxidermy squirrels is from an episode of _**Bob's Burgers**_ _._


End file.
